Hello again and welcome to another weekly recap!

But wait, you say, it’s not Friday today… No, indeed, here in Sweden it’s currently Monday evening, and as we already mentioned over at Facebook and Google+ last week (sadly, we forgot about Twitter..), we are rescheduling our future updates to Mondays from now on.

The reason is simply that we have changed our workflow and made stricter schedules for each of us, listing the tasks we need to do each week. Since we all enjoy working on the game during the weekends we also thought Mondays would be a better time to show the progress. That way we can show the tasks we finished during our scheduled week, including the things we saved for the weekend!

Anyway, let’s forget about that now and focus on what’s important: the update!

This week, Vilya spent making another zone, the east outskirts of the city. There’s a mysterious pond, a river and a house you won’t reach just yet.. ;3

To make the environment look better, and to avoid people getting hidden behind trees too often, we decided to create bushes to scatter around the areas. These will replace most of the random trees standing in the middle of any area so you won’t get caught by a naughty enemy hiding behind them.

Fred has been really busy this week. So busy, that he managed to complete all the tasks for next week, this week! Wooho!
Walk animations for a bunch of different NPCs was one of the tasks this week, so here’s a few of them in action paired together with some updated portraits by Vilya!

Writing and reading dialogues in XML-format was becoming quite impractical, especially for the artists. When the implementation workload let up a bit, Teddy whipped up a simple tool that made the process much less painful! The tool is made in good old C#/Winforms.

Next week: Being dead and waiting for revival in a multiplayer game is no fun. We’ll look into ways of making death (or being dead) a bit less boring!

Another week rushes by!

This week we (especially Fred) spent a lot of time spicing up the combat by adding new and improved effects to just about everything! To show you what it looks like, we prepared a video with commentary from our animator himself, Fred:

In the meanwhile, Vilya has spent her days reworking the dirt tiles from last week, fiddling around with the background layers of our mountain area – people requested blur, and we’ll try it out!

She has also been improving on the portraits a bit more, and yet another sneak peek is available here (click to view full size):

Who is that rude fellow?! He will be one of the frequently recurring characters of Grindea, but you’ll have to play the game to find out more than that! ;)

-Surprise Limerick*–

If when playing you play with ambition
there will most likely be repetition,
and while I don’t mind
some old fashioned grind,
I love to have fun on my mission!

[*Pixel Ferrets does not guarantee that it is, in fact, a limerick. While the visuals are sweet in general, the combat was missing some sort of flair! To rectify this horrible injustice, Teddy joined Fred in a glorious, effect filled crusade!]

Next week: We start working on a new zone and bringing the game’s first act together!

This week we have continued to refine and change small parts of the city. There’s always things to change for the better, so it’s quite easy to keep busy that way..

One of the many touch ups Vilya has been working with this week is giving the old dirt roads a face lift! Shout out to the guys over at the TIGsource forums for their great feedback and keeping us motivated!

Anyway, we continue on, this time showing you another screen (an animated one on top of that!) of another part of Evergrind City:

(Click the image to watch it in full size and animated!)

Fred keeps filling the city with NPCs and animations, to help Evergrind come to life! Some of the stuff he did this week can be seen in the screenshot above.

There’s still a ton of NPCs and other animations to go before Evergrind is even close to finished, so stay for more of the same the coming weeks!

Also, as promised, below is the song that’s playing in Evergrind City! It’s written by Andrew Riley of Luckylionstudios.com, who’s composing the entire soundtrack for us!

[audio:https://www.secretsofgrindea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Andrew-Riley-Secrets-of-Grindea-OST-Evergrind-City.mp3|titles=Andrew Riley – Secrets of Grindea OST – Evergrind City]

Author’s comment: “I wanted to write an upbeat, fun song, with a certain sentimentality that would come with spending time in the city with your friends. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening!“

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Formed by pixly gods
Brought to life through wizard’s writ
Art of crafting games”

[Teddy has mostly been busy with his favourite part of the job: implementing the tidal wave of stuff created by the artists!]

Next week: We venture indoors in Evergrind and we take a shot at spicing up the combat!

We’re back! The holidays were great and we all got some time together with our friends and family, but we also managed to squeeze in some work. Here’s what we’ve been doing lately:

Vilya has been putting together the major city of the game: Evergrind City. The outside areas are almost completely done and the only thing missing is creating what will be inside the houses. Quite some work, of course, but we’re well under way! Here’s a screen from the city, more to come next week:

Fred has had his hands busy with three things: skills, NPCs, and being sick once again.

Here’s the Ice Nova skill in action. Close ranged AoE at its best! The added chance to freeze your enemies is a pretty sweet bonus.

And here we have one of the many NPCs living in Evergrind. The Blacksmith! Besides having one of the finest beards in all of Grindea, this fellow will help the players along their quest by forging some of the sweetest gear you can get your hands on!

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Skills to pay the bills
Sharpened blades and crippling cold
Winter is coming”

[In the programming department, most time has been spent on getting Fred’s skill animations into the game and working, as well as making them look as good as possible!]

Next week: More Evergrind goodness, plus a special treat for your ears!