New week and a new cabin redesign! This cabin belongs to a fashion designer from Tai Ming, who fled their home to start a new life in the Merchant Isles after the great cataclysm started by Zhamla:

After that, it’s time for a quick break from the Ghost Ship to make another one of the Pillar Mountains improvements! Because this cave will have some significance later on, we wanted its entrance to look a bit more fancy:

What you’ll find inside? Well… You’ll see!

For now it’s time for some more ghost like portraits, starting with the headless chef:

Quite an.. eh.. Interesting portrait, no? First time drawing a portrait without an actual head!

And next up, the bartender, who will have an important part to play in the players quest to get through this dungeon:

With the ghost ship ghost quest inclusion, it’s time to do something we haven’t done in a long time – add another interface!

In your quest to help the ghosts, you will need to bring items to them that will remind them of who they are. To do this, you’ll have to first speak with a confused ghost, bringing up an interface featuring all items you’re able to present to the ghosts (mainly misc and key items). Upon selecting an item, the ghost will then let you know if it’s what they’re looking for (which will clear up their confusion), or if it’s not.

We wanted this interface to be quite straight forward with lots of space for items so you don’t have to scroll too far looking for the item you want to give each ghost. We also wanted a box where you can view the item’s name before giving it.

Here’s my early sketch:

And the progress:

We’ll start off this new week with adding a slight puzzle or bonus thing to the corridor thing, featuring a pushable piece of staircase!

Our goal is to include a bunch of these optional things for the players to do while making their way through the ghost ship, as well as the side quests with the ghosts that we’ll be adding likely at a later date.

For now though, let’s take a look at how I move things around and create this rather simple puzzle thing:

As we come up with more of the ghosts that you’ll meet in the ghost ship, a couple of the rooms need to change a little to properly house them. This cabin for instance, which was left rather bland while we decided which ghost we wanted to stay in it, has now been turned into a singing diva ghost’s cabin:

And of course, with the addition of all of these ghosts, it’s time to start making portraits for them as well! Starting today with the pianist:

The next spirit portrait is that of an old lady! Sometime during the many years since the ship left harbour, she got separated from her husband. Will you be able to reunite them again?

In Fred’s animation department, there’s a bunch of more enemy details being worked on! The eerie painting can now spin around like a madma-… err madspirit, and there are some creepy eyeballs rolling around (ew):

For one of the puzzles there will be torches to light, and ghosts holding them up:

And also, a couple more friendly(ish) ghosts to live on the ship:

Alright! New week, and with my work on the ghost ship mostly done for now, it’s time to start looking back on those improvement ideas I was working on a little while ago!

Starting with the Pillar Mountains portion, here’s a bunch of the new props that will decorate the town area:

With more to come – I already have a bunch of new ideas for stuff to add here aside from these items, but I think I’ll continue on with the sketches I’ve already made for now, meaning Pillar Mountains is next!

So, moving on to the Pillar Mountains improvements, we’ll start off with a couple of random things to give the area a bit more personality; some poles and a railing of some sort (gotta keep the kids from falling off the mountain now don’t we):

I’m also gonna make a bunch of other plants and stuff to make the area seem a little bit more lush as well, starting off with this one:

Some more greenery to spice up these backgrounds:

As well as another one of those poles, this one facing the other direction:

I also feel like we could use some bigger variance between the trees so I decided to make another birch, this one a bit smaller than the one we use already:

And here’s where we’re at after having added a bunch of more stuff:

I think Pillar Mountains will definitely look a bit more interesting after this, especially with a bunch of more things added which we’ll look at later on…

For now though, it’s time to return to the Ghost Ship! With Teddy and Fred having started work on the third floor, things become more and more clear and one of the things we wanted to change slightly is the background of the corridor leading to the huts, making it bigger, so here goes:

A bit more space in there! I think I’ll have to add some more random boxes and stuff around the room to keep it from feeling too empty, but one step at a time right :)

And of course, Fred having started work on the third floor means more ghosts! Here’s a bunch of the spirits you’ll meet on your adventures through the ship:

New week, and it’s time to finish up the third floor (my part of it, anyway)! With the hub room finished, the third floor backgrounds are more or less completed, and all that remains now is to add those fancy border decorations:

…and apply the floor masks to make sure the effects all go in their proper places:

Now that the interior of the ship is mostly done, it’s time to start focusing on finishing up the exterior, where the last boss of this dungeon will take place. Looking back at the shape of the ship, I felt a bit displeased with the way it looked and so decided to improve on it a bit, starting with the front:

Slightly better, no? I’ll adjust the back a little bit as well I think, but after that the exterior should be more and less done as well – until we start testing out the boss battle and no doubt need to adjust certain things, at least!

Continuing on then, the back of the ship needed a slight upgrade as well shape wise, so here goes:

In the interior, a while ago we decided to change the direction in which you travel through the eastern part of the ship’s third floor, resulting in that I had to change which of the rooms contained the rope ladder and which contained the jumpdown:

We’ve also had quite a few discussions regarding what we want to happen on the ship’s third floors, and a lot of our talks have revolved around whether or not we’d like to include friendly ghosts on the ship. Early on we wanted to avoid this, but as time went on we became more and more enthusiastic about the idea of having some friendly ghosts to chat to that could also give you quests; so we decided to go for it. As such, the final part of the ship will involve some traditional questing where you need to bring some ghosts back to their senses in order to get to the final part of the ship. Of course, once this is done you’ll also be able to do other quests with ghosts on the ship, making it a semi bustling place of its own (hopefully). Don’t worry though, we won’t go overboard (ha) – we’ll try to keep the amount of NPCs on the ships to a decent amount (and not Tai Ming style 60+) :)

With this addition, we actually feel a lot more excited about the ship as a whole, so hopefully it’ll be something you guys enjoy as well!

And speaking of which, here’s a bunch of Fred’s tests for the ghost NPCs which he starting working on pretty much as soon as we decided this is the route we want to take (did I mention we are quite excited about this addition?):

The first completed ghost is the spirit of a pianist who once played at the grand soirées of the hub room, but now has forgotten who he is and floats around the ship looking for clues that will return his memories… How sad! Will you be able to help him?

New week, and it’s time to get back to work after I finally managed to beat that pesky cold! Luckily, only I seem to have gotten sick this time around, so let’s hope Teddy and Fred keep staying healthy.

This week I’ll begin with making one of the more important rooms of the third floor: a ‘hub’ room of sorts that will lead you to various other places, and will also be quite an important place on this ship:

In the second part of the hub room, or the dining hall, or the bar, or whatever you’d like to call it, we’ll focus on some new props and decorations to make the room a bit more interesting. Also, moss!

Going back to the boss room where you’ll meet the giant eye boss, once it got it’s regular version it of course needs a ghost world version as well; in fact, you’ll be spending most of this fight in the ghost world whether you want to or not!

We’re trying to keep this room rather simple, as there will be quite a lot of things on the floor and walls here; eyes of various kinds and magic attacks to avoid, so throwing too many decorations into this space would be a bad idea.

And here we have a comparison of the old, placeholder version of the room (first) and the new, proper version (second):

And so, after another set of long weeks, the second of the three floors of the Ghost Ship has been finished. This includes a bunch of details, more ghosts, the fridge boss in it’s finished form, strange encounters and gunpowder – oh my!

Now it’s on to finishing floor 3, and after that, the last boss fight of the ship which we so far haven’t touched much but which we hope will be super exciting once we get there :D

And of course, with the completion of the second floor, Fred has also finished up a bunch of animations for decorations (and enemies) that you will encounter there! Here’s a bunch

This week was rather different than a regular week, cause it was GGC week! This means we were helping out with the conference, judging the games made at the school and selecting the winners that will receive awards in the award ceremony the whole conference culminates in.

This is always a nice opportunity for us to hang out with some other people in the business, share ideas and learn from them and what they’re doing – there were plenty of interesting talks on work environment this year during the conference which is a very interesting topic for our industry at this time.

First though, a quick finished version of the eye boss room which has so far only existed in a very basic sketch version, before diving into the expo stuff:

So then, GGC officially started and it started with some fun!

Monday evening we went to a meet & greet for all the jury members for this years event, hanging out with old and new friends from the industry at fellow Visby gamedevs Eat, Create, Sleep’s super cool office building.

We had some pizza and some wine, talked and played some games:

Then, it was back to work – although not our usual kind. Instead we spent most of the Tuesday listening to student presentations, after which we were off to the booth crawl, where the jury gets to actually try out all of the games for the first time.

Some pictures from the presentations I watched, I gotta admit I’m very impressed with them this year – the presentations have all been great and everyone’s english is super good compared to way back when I went to the gamedev program (one of the perks of turning it into a proper international education, I suppose):

So, after the presentations were done, all of the judges went to the showfloor for this year’s booth crawl, where we’re allowed to play the games in relative peace (it’s only open to the judges and the other students this evening). There’s also a bar to make things more fun…

During this time we played a majority of the games. There were a lot of cool ones as always, and many interesting new ideas.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from the showfloor:

Then, on Wednesday, we played any games we might have missed. It was also one of the hottest days of this summer yet, so we took a couple breaks to sit by the sea and discuss the games we’d played while slowly melting in the sunlight.

In the evening there was a jury-only dinner at the school’s restaurant, after which we all sat down together to discuss which games we wanted to nominate for each of the award categories.

During the final day, we had a couple hours to play any games nominated by the other jurors, before finally sitting down to decide on which games should be given which award. Last year, this discussion took hours – thankfully it was quicker this time around. Then in the evening, there was the great award ceremony and after party which was a blast but from which I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures.

Sadly, I ended up catching a cold right as we finished up GGC, so I haven’t had much energy to do anything the last couple of days. I’m hoping to be back to work in a couple days, but if I know myself well enough this cold will take it’s time to sort itself out so I wouldn’t expect any new recap posts next week – fingers crossed that I’m wrong! :(

New week, and it’s time to finish up that ghost shop room by turning it into it’s spirit world version! For me, that means more darkness and some changed up colours, but once Fred gets his hand on this room, he’ll be adding some floating ghosts and creepy things in those cages among other things :)

Next up we have a special room that will appear in two different version! The first version is this, which is a perfectly ordinary room, no?

Of course, even the regular version of this room needs a proper ghost world version in case the player decides to turn the spirit lens on:

Now, for the second version of this room… It’s certainly different! See, the first time you’ll enter this room, you won’t be able to see the door. Instead, you’ll come face to face with just an ordinary wall.

And what lies behind the wall if you pass into the spirit world?

A mysterious, never ending bridge….. Of course!

And naturally, I have to make the version with just the wall as well, so here goes:

So what’s this bridge? Where does it lead? Can a neverending bridge actually lead anywhere? What does any of this actually mean? Well… It’ll all become very clear soon enough! Soon…

This week, we’ll start off by making some more minor detail stuff, namely adding masks for each of the 2nd level floors now that they’ve been properly finished! As before, these masks help determine over which parts certain floor effects in the ghost world will appear, so that they don’t turn up over objects they shouldn’t:

Next it’s time to finish up the third and final floor of this ship (finally), starting with the captain’s room! We had a sketch for this room from before, and I already made the captain’s portrait that we wanted in here, so it’s just a matter of adding the rest of the stuff:

And after that, it’s of course time to turn the whole room into its ghost world version, standard procedure as always:

And now, time for a new room! This room was born from the type, where Ghost Ship turned into Ghost Shop… and it did seem like such an interesting idea that we thought ‘why not’? So without further ado, the ghost shop:

Meanwhile, Fred’s been busy finishing up a ton of enemy animations, working on the kitchen and making some other flavor animations to make the ghost ship …come alive… a bit more! Here’s a bunch of the stuff he’s been working on recently:

We’re back with a new week, and it’s time for the ghost ship exterior to get more detail work! This time around it’s all about making it look old and worn, adding moss and decorations fit an old ship drifting the sea for quite a while:

Next up, it’s time to start working on the kitchen room, where we’ll have one of the mini boss encounters against that fridge which we’ve shown the prototype of previously.

For those of you that still remember, I did create some of these kitchen props ages ago (among the first things I made for the ghost ship), but now it’s finally time to put them in their actual context and make this room properly:

And here in this second part of the kitchen creation, I’ll add some bonus details to make the room come alive a bit more; more shelves and stuff like that.

In the open space between the desks we’ll put the fridge once Fred has finished making it:

Finally, it’s time to turn the kitchen into a haunted, horrible place for its spirit world version:

And now that the second floor is more or less completed, it’s time to add all of that detail work that we applied to the first floor before! Let’s take a look at the second floor’s before and after:

New weeks and new beginnings! Since I expect to finish the ghost ship before Teddy and Fred are done with it, I’ve started looking at some old places that will need some improvements before we release the finished version of the game (we’re not all too far off now compared to when we started, anyway!).

This entails going back to the early areas and taking a look around, figuring out what things can be added to give each place a bit more character. The idea is to add more unique items and fancy stuff to make these places look cooler and more special. I know some of you might think this is a waste of time at this point, but it’s really good for me to have a detailed to-do list so that I know what to do next. After the ghost ship there’s only one dungeon remaining after all, so I will have quite some time to do improvements like this while Teddy and Fred finish up their things!

So anyway, Startington and Pillar Mountains. Pretty empty areas, and they probably shouldn’t feel too overcrowded given their kind of solitary location, but there are definitely some things that could be added to give it some more personality:

As always, if you have any cool ideas for improvements across the maps, feel free to share them! We love to hear your suggestions :)

Alright: back to the ghost ship, and more specifically it’s exterior! It’s quite the long project with a lot of details needed, so here’s yet another part (of several remaining), this time focusing on getting some floor texture and details in on the masts:

…and here’s more texturing! This time featuring the hull of the ship:

Now that this is done, most of what remains is the actual details; moss, ropes and similar. Next time!

In the boss department, Teddy and Fred has managed to give the eye an actual body and some personality! This also entails another mechanic, where the eye leaps out from its place in the wall and jumps around with a bunch of smaller eyes. Eyes, eyes, everywhere!

Your challenge here is to find the eye that has a different color from the rest and eliminate it, all while being shot at by the remaining smaller eyes on the wall:

Finally, some more updates from Fred’s animation department, featuring the captain, the giant eye, and…. a strange looking ghost?!