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!

Another week, another update! We’re now halfway through December and everyone is counting the days left before christmas. Here at the Secrets of Grindea office we keep pressing on while dreaming of the traditional swedish christmas cuisine.. :3

This week Vilya made even more portraits! She also revised some of them, and revisions will keep being made throught the entire production. Here’s an example of changes being made on the go, as well as a few of the new faces:

Better? We think so!

She also started making a few props that will appear inside one of the buildings in town. A few weapon stands, for example:

Besides adding some new stuff to the super secret first boss, Fred has been swinging away at some new skills and NPC sprites!

This here is one of the early skills from the one handed weapons skill tree (we have 8 trees in total). We haven’t got a proper name for it yet, but it plunges the hero forward damaging anything in it’s path. Range and damage increases by leveling it up.

-Weekly Programming Haiku-

“Treasures, puzzles, fight!
Only the best are chosen.
Are you strong enough?”

[Teddy has mostly been laying the foundations for the spectacular trials! For the puzzle part, a few more puzzles were created to ease new players into it!]

Next Week: Merry Christmas!

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?!