GIFs! GIFs everywhere! In this post, we  go berserk with the GIFs, and we start off with Vilya who has tried something new: step-by-step GIFs!

Typically Vilya also records videos of her progress with sprites and portraits (which can be seen on her blog), but this time she also tried her hands on making GIFs of the steps. Here’s the result, featuring a portrait and a rework of the Slime card:

Most of our time has been spent dealing with the upcoming Black Ferrets battle, though!

First up, the new boss portrait:

Then, a few GIFs with the battle itself, from our early test runs:

And finally, some of the sprite work Fred has been working on for this battle:

Excited for the battle? We are too, and hopefully the patch where you’ll be able to try it out won’t be too far away! Stay tuned for more next week :)

Yes, it’s another week of festival stuff! And most likely there will be at least one more before we’re completely done :)

Vilya has started working on the treasure cave, where the flashback cutscene involving your mother Charlotte and the dragon will take place:

The cave will be filled with gold and treasures of various kinds, and this here is only the WIP of the left part of it – in the end it’ll be twice as big!

We also decided (thanks to Owns suggestion on the forums), to add cutouts to the festival, which you can stand behind:

In the end our idea is that you’ll be able to ask Luke & Marino (whom you’re at the festival with) to stand behind them as well, and we’re currently looking into the possibility of having a cameraman who will create a screenshot for you after you press a button. Not 100% sure if that will work yet though, but we think it’d be pretty fun!

Other than that, a lot of new expressions have been made in order for the characters to express the right feeling(s), both in the flashback cutscene (young dad!) as well as in and around the festival:

More to come next week!

Finally, Fred has started working on another mini-boss battle that will take place near the festival in time, and I’m sure you’ve been missing these guys:

Excited yet? Hang in there for a bit longer, the festival is just around the corner! :3

Christmas is drawing near, and we’ve been putting up Christmas decorations and hunting for presents, but that hasn’t stopped us from at least getting some work done on the game!

The miniboss is coming along nicely. As mentioned in the last recap, he can dash across the stage as an invulnerable ball of light, firing bullets all around him. When in physical form, he’ll fire another pattern the player will need to traverse before being able to punish him!

Even normal mode is a bit tricky…

…but hard mode brings it to 11! 

Hmm… I wonder what he’ll be like in the Arena Challenge! As you can probably tell from the screenshots, the temple is flying high above the ground. Perhaps now the birds will make more sense as an enemy :D

Speaking of enemies, here’s the last regular enemy of the dungeon, the Brawler Bot:

These guys can quickly close the gap between you with the help of a rocket dash, followed by a straight punch to the face! One or two of them is not really a problem, but in numbers they start to surround you. If they get shielded by a blue Guardian Crystal, you might be in some trouble!

This week also marks the sad end of Fred’s tablet, a Bamboo Wacom, previously thought indestructible. RIP Mr. Bamboo :(

The following couple of weeks, the updates might not be all that substantial due to the holidays, but we’ll probably manage to squeeze something in!

This week our work with the dungeon has continued! Fred and Teddy has kept crunching back in Visby, fiddling around with the various mechanics and animations for the enemies in the flying dungeon.

One of their latest creations is this little fellow, a robot that will feature as a mini-boss halfway (or so) through the dungeon!

The robot might not look like much in this form, but he’s a nasty one! He’s been programmed to transform himself into a swarm of magic orbs, beaming across the room while damaging everything in his way. Your only chance to kill him is in the scarce moments when he’s actually still in this physical form! But beware, he might have a surprise in store as you come close as well…

While the boys have been working on that, Vilya has been preparing the rooms in which the enemies will be found. Some of them can be seen here (click to enlarge the pictures):

This it the room that comes just before the boss room. You will begin your journey here and come back to it in the end, after you successfully managed to unlock the door by starting three different machines throughout the dungeon.

This room will house one of the puzzles of the dungeon, which is directly related to a skill you’ll learn here. The skill allows you to beam from one area in a room to another. How it will be done will be explained later – there will also be a visual cue where it is possible.

Expect to see more of the dungeon next week! :3

This week Vilya worked on the arena which now is in waiting-mode while Fred takes care of the next step! It is almost done, but need some tweaking and of course an excited crowd to watch your trials.

While waiting, she spent her time making portrait for a cutscene involving the first mini-boss battle, a mean bandit leader and her two thugs.

Next thing she went on doing was small props to be placed all around the city. Many more to come, of course:

Fred has spent some time adding a few flavor animations to the bandit gang, this here showing one of the thugs cheering on as the leader fights the player/players!

But mostly he has been busy with bringing the first boss to life! Even though being sick (damn you Vilya!) he has been able to finish up most of the animations, with just a couple left to clean up!

We don’t want to spoil all the fun by revealing too much about the bosses yet, so you guys will have to settle with this for now! Who’s that pokemon!?

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Written destiny,
even Escape brings same end:
The Wobbling Giant.”

[I have made some in-game cutscenes, and also implemented the first ‘real’ boss. Of course, unlike in some games (looking at you Tales of Vesperia), you can press escape during a cutscene to skip it!]

Next week: The city keeps growing and the first NPCs moves in! Also, treasure hunting (for real this time!)

This week has been a little bit all over the place! We have had about a hundred subjects to discuss and plan as a result of soon having to implement the city and all that comes with it.

In short we have designed a fishing mini-game and treasure map system, made a mockup of the arena, sent out descriptions for the next batch of songs we need, made concepts of the first real boss character and finally continued on the various things we left unfinished last week.

We also made some changes in the planning of what stuff to make first, but that is hardly interesting enough to be talking about: instead, let’s take a look at what our group members have been focusing on outside of these discussions.

In the animation department, Fred has continued working on the female bandit leader. So far she’s weighing in at around 20 animations with just one or two left before she’s all done! Here’s another sneak peek of her and her madness:

We know we mentioned NPCs last time, but as a result of changing things and priorities around a bit we’re afraid they will have to wait until after we’re done with the next big thing: the arena!

In the city building district Vilya finished off the houses, all of which are now more or less ready for implementation. Here’s a preview of three of the stores that will be featured in the shopping district:

Can you guess what they are? The purple one is the hat shop, the brown is a smithy and armory, the green is, of course, the alchemist’s potion shop.

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“A black clad demon,
raging death in human form,
tamed by tester’s tears.”

(The boss is in the game. She was too difficult at first, but now she’s nicer)

Next Time: The arena takes shape and we go treasure hunting!

A big hug to everyone who’s subscribed to us on Facebook, Twitter and other places! Having people show interest in what you’re doing is a great morale boost.

Let’s celebrate with a recap of the past week!

Fred has made some sweet animations for our first miniboss: a familiar looking, female bandit leader! She’s no behemoth but she might still prove a challenge to the inexperienced adventurer.

Meanwhile, Vilya has started building houses for the main city while battling a terrible cold. The buildings below are common residencies – the shops and other special houses will have huge signs on the roof implying what use they have.

Here’s the sketch she used as reference:

And here’s the end result (still to be tweaked):

The city is going to be fairly big, featuring about 15 buildings (including a smithy, an alchemist store, a hat store, a café and more), a market and the grand Colosseum!

In the coding department, a recoloring shader was made to make the creation of new clothing colors easier. First, a tool turns every spritesheet into a Na’vi, and in-game the shader will recolor it.

This makes it possible to change the colors of individual pieces of clothing separately on the fly, without any additional asset loading.

Next time: The miniboss will be put into the game, and the citybuilding will continue! Maybe we’ll see some NPCs?!