Vilya's Work-blog! (aka Pixel Ferrets behind the scenes)

MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 02, 2015
Time Travel Town" Zone 01 - Upper


And today we're back in action, continuing to work our way upwards from the Garden a few posts ago! The other day we made the two houses that will be the main feature in this upper part of the zone, but now it's time to add details surrounding them.

And here's what these upper parts look like, now that everything has been added:

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A video about Vilya's progress and a picture of the whole area can be found over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/time-travel-town-zone-01-upper.html


APRIL 03, 2015
Snowman Skill Upgrade

When thinking about what the final charges of each spell should be, we thought long and hard on the Snowman summon and how to make it more fun. We realized that we wanted to remake him a bit, adding more options for you in terms of controlling what he does.

Our idea was that when he's been summoned, if you click (or hold) his summon button again you'll be presented with four arrows, one in each direction, representing four different commands to give your summon. Pressing the direction of a command will trigger it and close the menu automatically, so hopefully it won't be too bothersome in the middle of a fight. ​


More on the frosty friend summon and how the skill might change can be found at
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/snowman-skill-upgrade.html
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 06, 2015
Promo Art for Steam, Part 1: Preparations

Last week on the Devblog we announced our intentions to finally prepare Secrets of Grindea for a Steam early access release. In order to do so, there's a bunch of stuff to finish, and one of those things is to create suitable promo art that can appear on Steam, which I'll be talking about today!

Planning how to make this piece of promotional art begins with browsing Steam and checking what other gamedevs do while asking yourself questions: Does this artwork catch my attention? Can I guess the game's genre solely based on it's promotional artwork? Are there any in-game graphics present? Add a "why/why not?" at the end of each of them, and keep going! While it's good to stand on your own, you also want to know how others handle stuff like this - for instance, if all Action RPGs use a similar kind of motif, the audience may associate Action RPGs with said imagery, and it might be a good idea to know so you can attract the correct audience.

While browsing, I save certain artworks I find interesting and put them together in a document so I can analyze them more easily and discuss what makes them work (or not) with the others in the team:

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The second step is to collect a bunch of images that resemble the feeling I want to portray within our own promo art. These images can be found all over the web, and I won't use any of them for specific reference of anything like that - I just want a collection of images giving off a certain vibe to help me stay on the right track and fuel my inspiration when creating something similar.

The rest of this blog entry can be found at
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/promo-art-for-steam-part-1-preparations.html
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 07, 2015
On today's episode of
Vilya's Blog
Portrait of a Mountain Kid

01%2B-%2BLine%2BArt.png


A WIP video and the different work steps of the sprite can be found at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/portrait-of-mountain-kid.html

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MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 08, 2015
A day in the life & the Barracks F1

Working with Secrets of Grindea full time is really the dream life for me. While the days can get long sometimes, and it's easy to get stuck in a loop of working right before bedtime that kind of messes with your sleeping schedule, it's definitely worth it!

This day was one of those typical days where I completed a bunch of smaller tasks, while also working on one bigger piece. Let's break it down!
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09:00 - Wakeup & Work Time!​
I woke up before the alarm went off, after way too little sleep, and nobody else was yet awake! D: This happens quite often nowadays, perhaps because it's starting to not be pitch black outside 24/7. Now, while I do prefer to get my 8 hours of sleep, waking up early feels good because you can start work early as well.

It's a big plus to work in your own living room so you can start and quit work whenever you want! :)​

The rest of the Pixel Ferrets work day can be read at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/a-day-in-life-barracks-f1.html


APRIL 09, 2015
Promo Art for Steam, Part 2: The Girl

Time to continue on with the promo art! As I mentioned a few posts ago, we decided to go for a piece that features both in-game graphics and HD characters. Below you can see the thumbnail we chose, as well as some make-shift in game graphics and the game logo pasted on top of it:



Once the overall layout has been established, I start sketching what the characters could look like and show it to the rest of the team for approval or criticism:

​

More about the WIP promo art can be seen at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/promo-art-for-steam-part-2-girl.html
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 10, 2015
Steam Networking: Friend Invites

One of the things we wanted to get ready before the Steam Early Access release is the system that allows you to invite Steam friends to a game session, rather than having them connect through IP Let's take a look at that!

As most of you probably know, connecting to IP sometimes causes a lot of issues, forcing people to deal with port forwarding, Hamachi or other messy solutions to something which should be very easy. Now that we have implemented steam networking, you'll (hopefully!) be able to invite anyone on your friendlist without all that hassle!

In order for this to work smoothly, we have made a new interface for the multiplayer lobby:

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Steam Networking guys and gals. Read more about it and the implementation in the future over at
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/steam-networking-friend-invites.html
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 13, 2015
Promo Art for Steam, Part 3: The Guy... Or half of him, at least!

Time to keep on working with that promotional artwork! In this post, it's all about the guy. As with the girl, this part of the portrait was to begin with, pretty straight forward, doing line art, color blocking, then shading (as usual):

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Read more about the promo art for steam over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/promo-art-for-steam-part-3-guy-or-half.html

APRIL 14, 2015
Promo Art for Steam, Part 4: The Guy, Second Try

Let's keep on working on the second version of the promo art guy! As with the girl, this process is pretty much the same as working on any portrait, but with more reference images. We took a ton of different photos for the hand, for example, because hands are evil and really hard to draw...!

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Read more about the promo art for steam over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/promo-art-for-steam-part-4-guy-second.html
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 16, 2015
More Steam Early Access Preparations!

Creating promotional art is not the only task I have when it comes to getting us ready for Steam Early Access. Today we'll take a look at a bunch of the smaller tasks I've completed in this regard!

First of all, we needed a bunch of additional portraits to the cutscene with Elder Winter:





Second, there was a bunch of skills that still didn't have a proper image in their "more info" sections, so I spent some time taking screenshots of those.

Which, along with more preparations, can be seen over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/more-steam-early-access-preparations.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 17, 2015
Reworking Pillar Mountains Part 01: The Walls

Since I finished the essential things I needed to get done for the Steam Early Access release, I've been considering what I could do to improve stuff in the game while Teddy & Fred finish up the rest of their tasks. One of the things that has always been on the back of my mind is the way the Pillar Mountains (and Startington) look.



These areas were the very first created for the game, and in many ways it shows. Not only have I improved my pixel art a lot since I created these areas, the overall style of the game has changed a bit too - in the upper screenshot of Pillar Mountains, the pixel art has a ton of colors and feel much more "painted", compared to the screen below, which is more of what the game looks like nowadays:



More about the Wall retexturing can be seen at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/reworking-pillar-mountains-part-01-walls.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 20, 2015
Reworking Pillar Mountains Part 02: The Ground

So last time I was reworking the walls of this map. Today, it's time to take a look at the ground, and paint some new grassy edges!

Here's where we left off in the previous post:



The first step I'll take is to adjust the colors of the grass slightly. Since these walls are much brighter and 'cartoony' in it's shading style, the grass comes across as a bit over saturated and dark. In order for it to match the walls a bit better, I'm gonna edit it's shade to a more pastel-y hue:



During this step I also work around the path, editing the colors of the edges to adjust its appearance slightly.

More about the new pillar mountain style can be seen over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/reworking-pillar-mountains-part-02.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 21, 2015
Improving Pillar Mountains: A can of worms?

Today we added the part of Pillar Mountains that I finished improving to the game. As we ran around next to the walls, a bunch of questions started to pop up, actually filling us with doubt and dread! D:


Is this really better?
While all of us agree that the new mountains matches the rest of the game better, adding them to the game means we have to do a lot of additional work. Not only should these walls appear in every part of the Pillar Mountains, including the lower parts where you face the Black Ferrets for the first time, they're also part of Startington and similar walls are present in every cave - including the three areas that make up Mt:Bloom and its two outside entrances.

So in total, 10 whole maps that we can think of currently, plus every small cave!

On top of that, once we improve the walls, other things need to be improved as well. As you can see in the screenshot above, the bigger rocks on the playing field look a bit off next to the walls now - at the very least, they need to get their brightness/contrast adjusted to match the bright new mountain, but they should probably be repainted a bit as well. The bridges between pillars also need to be reworked, as do the houses and ideally the interior of Startington. Once you improve one thing, other old things will simply look too out of place next to them.

Read more about Vilyas thoughts and leave your opinion on the subject over at:
(or just comment in this thread - your opinions are really needed)
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/improving-pillar-mountains-can-of-worms.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 22, 2015
Another Mixed Bag!

Thanks for all your replies guys! They sure help a lot :D We'll take a small break from our worries with the mountainside for a bit, in hopes of reaching a solution after letting it rest a bit, and in the meanwhile I'll focus on finishing some more things that we want to implement before the Steam Early Access release (additional tasks like this appear all the time, as we plan quests in better detail or simply remember stuff we previously forgot).

First of all, there's the puzzle blocks that needed a recoloring to fit in the caves in the Seasonne, where the mountains are a bit more blue:



Then there were some additional portraits needed for the Temple of Seasons boss cutscenes:






http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/another-mixed-bag.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 24, 2015
A Summer Fae

It's another portrait! Actually, there will probably be a bunch more coming in the next week, as we need a bunch of new people to feature in quests in order to flesh out Seasonne and the Fae village :)

This is the portrait of a silly summer fae that has an important role to play in one of the quests.


Line Art

A video about Vilya's work progress and more visual steps of the character art can be seen at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/a-summer-fae.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 27, 2015
Tiny Santa

Another portrait of Santa?! Why in the world..? And, no, it's not a remake. Let's just say some weird things tend to happen in certain quests... ;)



Tiny Santa? What is going on? Maybe there are answers where that link leads to.
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/tiny-santa.html​


APRIL 28, 2015
From the GDC Vault: "Going Indie: 10 Questions to Help You Decide if It's Right for You"

Have you thought about going indie? Do you dream of creating your own games, being your own boss? Do you worry whether or not you're ready, or if it's right for you? While I was working the other day, I was listening to this talk that's available for free over at the GDC Vault (lots of really awesome talks are available there, if you haven't checked it out)!



If you want to make your own games you really should take a look at Vilya's blog entry and the linked video.
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/from-gdc-vault-going-indie-10-questions.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
APRIL 30, 2015
Winterland Queststuff

One of the things we wanted to finish before releasing the game on Steam Early Access was to add quests to Seasonne (also known, informally, as the Winterland), and in order to do so, there was a bunch of small things for me to get in order!

First of all, a bunch of gifts, stolen by some particularly mean person:



Then... Expressions! A whole bunch, actually! I love doing expressions , trying to come up with ways to portray different feelings by simply changing the features of a face is a lot of fun. :)

Yeah... the expressions... i forget to bring them. But you can still find them over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/04/winterland-queststuff.html​
 
MrChocodemon

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
MAY 04, 2015
Another take on improvements!

Alright guys, prepare yourselves for a long post! This was actually supposed to be split into two or three separate posts, but since these updates got uploaded with the latest patch this weekend I figured I might as well post 'em all at once since there are no fancy timelapse videos of these updates anyways.

So, as you know we stopped reworking the stone walls of the Pillar Mountains. However, there are other things from the early part of the game that we felt definitely needed a bit of improvement. The buildings and details in and around Startington were among those!

Basically, I've been going over a bunch of things, cleaning up the pixel art and making them more crisp, rather than the kinda messy 'painted' look they had before.

So, here's what your family house in Startington looked like before:



Here is the before and after of the rework:


More of Vilya's reworks can be seen over at:
http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/05/another-take-on-improvements.html​
 
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