Darc Sharc (Rework)
Date: March 1st-April 30th, 2022
Roles: Animator, Designer, Trailer Producer
Mod Game: Rivals of Aether
Genre: Platformer, Fighting
Engine: GameMaker Studio 2
Summary: This is a rework of Darc Sharc, a character I made roughly a year ago for a Workshop Jam. It features a full gimmick rework, some new Special moves, and a stage to go along with him!
Development Experience
Before the project started, Darc Sharc was casually brought up by someone in the middle of a conversation, which eventually lead to the idea of a full-blown rework of Darc Sharc. While the character design for Sharc was pretty good, their main gimmick was completely unfit for a competitive environment, mainly due to having too many variables to keep track of.
Thus, the main goal of the rework was to reduce the majority of those variables. Working with McDucky, my coding partner, we started by completely sripping the card effects from Darc Sharc's normal attacks, leaving them exclusively on his specials. Next, we replaced the thirteen cards with four suit symbols, further reducing the variability in Darc Sharc's attacks. Lastly, and most impactfully, we completely removed any RNG elements from Darc Sharc's kit. It took me a while to come to that decision, but ultimately it seemed like the best option to make Darc Sharc competitively viable for once. Now, the four symbols Darc Sharc uses operate on a fixed rotation: Spade > Diamond > Club > Heart.
Animation-wise, Darc Sharc really only got changes to their Special moves. I didn't have a lot of time to reanimate Darc Sharc's normal attacks, what with my last semester of college happening, so I spent most of my time making the new projectile and stage control sprites featured in his new gimmick.
Darc Sharc's rework premiered in the Workshop 3Prints Chaos presentation. Originally, my plan was to release him after 3Prints Order (the second presentation happening the day after), since I figured more characters would be releasing on the day of the presentation, and I didn't want attention on him to be lost in a sea of releases. However, I ultimately released him a day early on May 1st. It's really early into his release, but hopefully he can become a successful competitive character this time around in the near future!
Darc Sharc's New Portrait
Dice
New Neutral Special Animation
The Symbol Rotation (Graphic on Steam page)
Steam Preview Image for Darc Sharc's Stage
New Down Special Sprites
An image I made for Darc Sharc's Trailer
