You’d think after finishing a bunch of sprites for housing, you’re all set, right? Nope! Time for step two in housing: making drop appearances/menu miniatures for everything!

Honestly, if there’s one thing I wish I knew how to streamline better it’s finding the right folder for stuff and saving a ton of items as PNG. Maybe there’s a way I haven’t found yet (I have not exactly done much looking).

Regardless, it takes a tooon of time saving items once you’ve finished making them. Not only do you have to check it for flaws (one of my great skills is accidentally leaving empty pixels in objects, trying to catch that before adding items to the folders now), and actually save it with all that entails, in the case of housing you also need to make menu versions since the big ones are much too large to show properly in the interface!

Above you can see a bunch of examples of miniatures, with the bigger versions below. After making this many, we had a talk about how to display Temple of Seasons stuff (since they will be three versions at once), and I had for some reason assumed that meant I should make three versions of everything. Because that would entail a whole lot of extra coding, we decided to either make one version that were all three at once, or simply stick with one of them and put a special icon next to it showing it gets transformed by the seasons.

After trying out the first idea (see above, upper right), we decided to simply stick with one version, in this case the summer!

And the madness continues! This time a bunch of surfaces and beds~

See that stray pixel between the red tablecloth and the left vines? Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m trying to avoid. And clearly failed to do so before uploading this image! Oh well, at least it won’t be in the game :D

And now…. Time for some Mimic updates!

To make this guy’s eat-attack look a little more interesting we decided to swap out coins of various colors for a different set of items. The mimic will still eat huge coins (which won’t do anything), but the items that cause various effects will be as follow:

Emblem – Causes shockwaves (not pictured yet)
Chili Pepper – Fire
Hourglass – Slows player character(s)
Box of Bombs – The mimic spews out a bunch of bombs!

Since Fred has a very hectic schedule right now with a ton of animations needed for next update, I stepped in to make temporary objects for him to eat (wip above). These will be upgraded and animated by Fred once he has a few spare minutes:

Here’s a GIF showing how the mimic boss has improved since last time. AGAIN all GIFs in this post run slower than in the actual game. I’m looking for a different program to record GIFs in since FRAPS isn’t working anymore and cutting things in GIFcam is a bother. If anyone has any  suggestions they are very welcome! Anyway!! Instead of simply leaving fire on the ground, he now shoots out balls of flame that cause a fire to burn where they land. We also made an effect for the hourglass slow-down, to make it more clear when you get affected by it:

In the third phase, the mimic will grow even bigger and become static. In order to harm the player, he will spew out a ton of random items and enemies.

In this part of the battle we have two options, and we have not quite decided which one to go for yet – either he’ll send the player far back (the room would then be a bit larger vertically) with some kind of pushing attack, then fill up the room with obstacles and enemies the player needs to get past in order to hit the Mimic again. The second option is to have the Mimic invincible, until he gets exhausted (triggered by you clearing enough waves of enemies/items), at which point he’ll reveal his tongue which you can hit do deal damage.

We’ve also discussed a special attack where the Mimic starts sucking all the items he spewed out towards him, causing damage to the player if you get sucked too close (due to spikes or something similar poking out of the chest), but we haven’t finalized that part yet so I cannot say if it will actually appear in the game.

Finally, let’s end this week with a quick look at the skill you’ll unlock in the fourth dungeon~

So this skill has the codename “the ghost skill” because we haven’t come up with anything better yet. What it does is basically it shows you the spirit world, where things look a bit different.

There are a ton of possibilities for this skill, including having enemies that can damage you in the real world by using real weapons, but you cannot hurt them unless you go into the spirit world. There’s also obstacles you can only pass in the spirit world, or hidden treasures only seen while in it.

With this skill you’ll also be able to talk to ghosts, which might help you on your journey or give you quests?! Who knows, this is just a very early prototype after all.

What do you think? Too dark and scary? We’ll do our best to make sure nothing becomes too creepy, just the right amount!

It’s our 260th recap and this week I’ll be focusing on more housing content, while Teddy and Fred continue prototyping the Mimic boss!

Last time when we looked at the Seasonne housing items, there were a bunch of the basic ones. This time, it’s time to add some random special items! A christmas tree, christmas stockings, garlands, presents, a christmas flower… Pretty much everything christmas inspired I could think of quickly:

Do you feel like we missed another christmas themed item that would be cool to have in the house? Go ahead and comment! :)

For the Temple of Seasons housing items, most items will have 3 versions that change depending on the season. You’ll be able to place an orb to change the season in the room, which will change your items (and if you won’t want to keep the orb after swapping season, you can simply remove it again).

Some progress GIFs of the bed:

For the Temple of Seasons summer window, I’d like there to be a cute little bird in the nest or something. I just keep coming up with ideas hoping Fred and Teddy will cooperate in implementing them! But since it’s a great idea, I’m sure they will… Right?! ;)

The wall decorations to the right and the fairy statues will remain the same regardless of season, the rest will change as you hit the orb:

And now, time to change those seasons!

First up, the autumn batch! The vines have dried up and the leaves have fallen off the bushes. Also everything has orange hues rather than yellow and green. For the window I imagine dried up leaves blowing past:

In the winter version, everything is blue and white, and the vegetation have become more colorless (aside from the magic bush in the corner which never dies). There’s hanging a bunch of icicles in the window:

And now… finally…. A preview of the Mimic boss fight!! (These GIFs are for some reason a bit laggy/slower than what the actual game looks like, but you’ll get the idea anyway)

This is the first version of this little guy, which we’ve (not surprisingly) focused on first. In total he’ll have three stages, where he grows in size and gets more complicated attacks in each step.

The first version is very straight forward right now, and will probably remain so. He basically jumps after you Jumpkin-style, getting enraged after you deal enough damage. Once you’ve done enough, he’ll go into a super rage-mode, jumping around and causing shockwaves:

The next version is a bigger and meaner version of the first. When he’s not jumping around, this time in a more Giga Slime-fashion, except for the slime, he spits out a ton of random items (in this version we’re using placeholder coins), after which he’ll start eating the items up again:

Depending on what item he eats, various bad effects will happen. One will cause flames to appear on the ground, another will have him send out shockwaves, a third will slow down the player, and a fourth sends out a ton a bombs. Madness!

Another week has gone by, this one focused on finishing up the second to last Tai Ming map, more housing items, and a lot of prototyping action!

A lot of things will happen on the courtyard map we showed last week, so it needs a whole bunch of different states. First, I’ll add some dirt and burn effect to the ground where the fire is raging:

Basically I paint dirt wherever the fire is, and repaint any bushes, trees, etc to darker, burned crisp versions. Some props, like the whack-able bushes, get completely destroyed and only leave a stump behind. While it would probably be more realistic to just remove everything except for maybe the trees, we felt like keeping the props with a burn effect on would make the map look more interesting than if everything was simply removed.

I also changed the color of the grass in the circle to a slightly more yellow-reddish hue, which would go along better with the flames:

Of course, once the effect we showed last week is put on top of this, things will look slightly different. But there’s a basic preview, anyway!

Now, time for some polish!

Previously I had not yet added the door in the back of the courtyard, so I went ahead and made that. There’s both an opened and closed version:

Since I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the way the cloth fall at the end of the ‘altar’, I decided to go back and edit the shape slightly:

The courtyard still felt a bit empty, and not messy enough (some stuff is going down!), so I threw in a bunch of planks, some broken glass, and other stuff. In the burned version, I added a burn effect only on the parts of each object that’s within the fire:

Finally, due to another time jump, there was need of a version of this place after the fire, where some time has passed. In order to illustrate that we added some newly grown grass, but not too much, since not that much time has passed at this point:

And now, the final part of the courtyard project: the present version!

First up, a GIF of the demolishing progress of the entrance/exit:

And then, a GIF of the transformation of the whole area! As usual, it’s all about breaking down items and adding more greenery. This map too will have two versions, one with a closed door and one with it open:

Final thing (some objects will be replaced automatically by the game engine):

In the housing department, it’s time to create the batch unlocked by entering Seasonne, and here are the basic items that will be available~

While there aren’t a ton of christmas-y items here yet, rest assured there will be a whole bunch of them before I’m done with this batch! Christmas trees, piles of presents, greenery hanging on the wall, christmas stockings…! Just you wait and see.

Also, feel free to suggest other christmas-inspired items (or any kind, really) here or on the forums :3

And now, some of Fred’s animations, featuring the second stage of the Mimic fight:

First of all, thanks a lot for your comments on last week’s blog post! Most people seem to agree that Easy Mode isn’t needed, so that’s how we’ll keep it until it seems that opinion have changed :)

This week we’ve once more, in the spirit of having shorter design meetings but scheduling them more often, had another set of discussion regarding upcoming Grindea stuff! This time we’ve mainly focused on the next dungeon (!) and the bow.

The Fourth Dungeon
So, we’ve talked a lot about this back and forth over the years. We do know we want it to be ghost/undead themed, but it’s been hard to decide on a setting, and we’ve gone from wanting it to be a ghost ship, to a ghost ship + an island, to a shrine on an island, and back to just a single ghost ship. After today’s meeting I’m fairly certain the 4th dungeon will indeed be a ghost ship, where your goal is to move from the bottom of the ship to the deck where the final artifact awaits you.

So far, in our very basic design, there will be a big floor at the bottom, which will be used as the ship’s storage area and where you’ll move through a set of rooms solving various obstacles until you get the skill used in this dungeon: an item that allows you to see into the spirit world. Some of the enemies and other.. things.. on this ship can only be seen & interacted with when using this skill. That means there might be flying swords coming after you that you can do nothing about until you have the skill that allows you to see the actual enemies!

The following two floors will consist a main corridor, which you’re supposed to get through. Only there’s obstacles in the way forcing you into other doors in hopes of finding a way around the obstacles, finding enemies and challenges on the way.

The ghost ship will probably be around the size of Temple of Seasons (that’s what we aim for, at least), and the main focus of the dungeon will be to use the dungeon skill to solve various puzzles and obstacles.

The Bow
We also talked a bit about the bow, since it’s something we haven’t touched upon a lot since it was implemented a hundred years ago! We agreed that we want to add more upgrades for the bow in general -even bigger quivers, more damage, etc, but we’re also looking into adding a bunch of talents for it (we want to add a ton of talents for basically everything, haha).

We’re also thinking of adding a NPC somewhere that can modify your bow into a fire or ice bow (there might be more options as we come up with them). With the fire bow, your arrows have a chance to burn on enemies, and the ice bow has a chance to make them cold. I’m guessing this NPC would be found in the later stages of the game, perhaps in the upcoming desert town. Either that or modifying your bow will be expensive enough for most people to save up for it for a while. But nothing about that is set in stone yet – gotta finish Tai Ming first :)

Speaking of Tai Ming, we’re of course continuing to work on the final part. This week I began working the second to last map for Tai Ming: The Courtyard!

After this there’s actually only the final Boss Room (which will have a couple of variations, so it’s still a bit of work left before I’m ready to completely leave Tai Ming behind)… What a journey!

For this background, let’s start with the basic sketch:

The circle in the middle are my indications of where you need to be able to battle stuff, hence there shouldn’t be a lot of stuff in the way around there. Otherwise we have a huge altar of sorts, and some greenery…

Progress:

And the final image below! You may notice the door from my sketch (on the altar) is missing. Actually you probably didn’t notice since it wasn’t very clear it was a door…. BUT in any case, there will, indeed be a door there in the future (I hadn’t made it at the point of taking the screencap below…):

A somewhat related thing we’ve been working on recently is creating a suitable effect for an upcoming battle! In this recap, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at our iteration progress as we implement and improve upon an idea.

So, this battle takes place in that courtyard above, and in the beginning, we had a vague idea of the battle area being surrounded by a circle of flames. Once the background was ready, Teddy went ahead and made a quick prototype of what that circle could look like:

While it certainly gives some kind of effect, it also felt a bit underwhelming. While discussing our options, we thought about making the trees and bushes burn, using another color flame and using different sizes for the flame particles, among other things, but nothing really felt spot on.

During our talk it also turned out some of us had imagined the flame circle differently. And so we went on to prototype another idea, where the fire would cover everything not inside the battle area.

Cue another screenshot:

Now this felt a bit more epic, but it still felt like it missed something. So I decided to take the above screenshot into Photoshop and started painting on top of it, creating a mockup of what I thought would be a cool effect for the battle:

After showing it to the others, Teddy used my mockup as a base and created a third prototype, this time featuring the illustrated effects:

After seeing this in action, we all pretty much agree this is a much better direction than the first basic flame circle. And we’re still gonna add/edit a bunch of stuff! For one, the graphics are all prototype here, the sparks in the air and the flame particles will be different in the final version. We’ll also the add the burning trees and greenery we talked about after seeing the first prototype, and I’ll edit the ground to look more burnt around the flames.

Now, we could have chosen to look at the fire circle in the first screenshot and say “this is OK, let’s keep it”. Instead, we kept pushing to make the scene better and more epic. Would it have saved us a lot of time to just stick with the original idea? Yes. Would the fight be as epic in the end? No.

And this is why it’s so hard for us to estimate how long things will take! Sometimes our first try is good enough, but often we have to spend a lot of time prototyping different options and change stuff before we get something we’re truly satisfied with. Is it worth it in the end? Well, I certainly believe it is and I hope you guys agree! :)

….And now for something different.

After some further discussing of the Housing and it’s ‘batch’ system (where you unlock a batch of x items in the furniture shop every time you enter a new area), we made a list of base items that should be included in each batch!

There will be a bunch of additional, random items as well, but we thought it would be good to have a common base for each batch. The items available in each batch will be:

1x Floortile
1x Wallpaper
1x Bed
1x Nightstand
2x Tables (one square and one rectangular)
2x Seats (one 1×1 tiled and one 1×2-1×3)
1x Window

And so, I went ahead and added a bunch of basic items for the two batches I already started working on (more special items to come):

My dream for the Flying Fortress window above is that it’ll have tiny clouds floating by, but I haven’t confirmed 100% it’ll actually happen yet. If it ends up being too time consuming to implement we’ll come up with something else (or make a loopable animation of it perhaps).

The above set will unlock when you enter Pumpkin Woods. Some of you might wish for a more extreme Halloween theme with scary ghosts and creepy stuff, but don’t worry! Those needs should be satisfied with another upcoming batch for.. another area… :3

Finally, because tradition, have a sneak peek at what Fred’s working on right now – the second stage of the Mimic battle! Yes, it’s growing…

Hey guys! In order to keep things clear about where we’re heading, plus better keeping track of our design ideas, we’ve decided to have shorter meetings but keep them more often. So this week it was time to get together and discuss the future of Grindea once more! There are some pretty big design decisions going on here… Let’s dive into ’em:

Making magic weapons semi-ranged
So, magic weapons don’t give as much attack, and it kind of sucks that magic users face a clear disadvantage when they’ve run out of mana. So we decided that we want to add a tiny magic orb (or something like that) that shoots out from the magic weapons as you hit with them, making the range of your weapon slightly longer. Of course, this won’t be long range by any means, but it should make it possible to do some damage while running around waiting for that energy to recharge.

Easy Mode or no Easy Mode?
We had a quite long discussion about whether or not to implement Easy Mode. On the surface it seems like such an easy decision: why not add Easy Mode? Well, our worry is that by adding Easy Mode, a lot of people who would succeeded in Normal Mode after trying a little longer, would just give up on harder challenges and swap to Easy Mode. And, in doing so, they would probably end up thinking ‘man that’s annoying’ rather than ‘OMG I FINALLY MADE IT’ upon victory.

We’ve had a lot of forum threads or feedback that begins with someone claiming something is impossible, only for them to come back a while later saying ‘okay I totally get it now, this is amazing’. Would those people persist and end up feeling amazing after beating that difficult challenge if there was an Easy Mode? Or would they end up thinking Normal Mode is too hard and the game is poorly balanced since they felt forced into swapping to an easier setting?

In the beginning of our time in Early Access there were quite a few of threads with people claiming the overall game was too hard, but as time has progressed, those threads don’t seem to appear any longer and those who do have problems end up farming for levels and better items before giving the challenge a go again.

So, perhaps Easy Mode is not as needed as we first thought? Because of this we probably won’t implement Easy Mode anytime soon, anyway (but we’ll definitely reconsider if there’s renewed complains about the game’s difficulty).

Making Fishing more challenging
Fishing is… well, fishing, so it’s very straight forward and there’s only so many steps in difficulty. Unfortunately that also makes fishing kind of repetitive after a while, so we’re considering adding another mechanic after a couple of maps. The mechanic we’re thinking about is that the fish can move up or down as well, which means that at some point the fish will dive/swim upwards and you’ll have to press up or down accordingly within the time limit. Of course, this isn’t a high priority addition, so it probably won’t happen for a while. But in the long run it might help make fishing a little bit more interesting.

Potion Rework / Bottle Addition
Potions are great, but we don’t like how they work right now, where you can stack endless numbers and basically get a permanent increase in whichever stat so long as you have enough potions. To counter this, we’re strongly considering an introduction of Bottles which are a very limited commodity of which you’ll only be able to find 3 in total. These bottles can then be filled with the potion of your choice.

You’d get your first bottle from Remedi after clearing the Collector’s Trials, and after you’ve decided what to put in it and use it for the first time, it will slowly refill itself over time and as you do damage on regular enemies (yes, it’s a magic bottle). If you have more than one bottle, you can choose whether to fill the bottles with the same potion or use different potions. You can use two different potions at once, but you won’t be able to drink another potion of the same kind until the first one’s effect has run out.

With this change, it’d also be possible to reintroduce health potions, for all of you guys constantly asking about various healing features ;) Of course, we’ll likely balance them so it’s more efficient to use the other potions, but maybe it’d still help ease the minds of those who really want to be able to heal their character.

There are more cards this week, as well, as we finish up the Tai Ming card album! First up: the Ancient Statue card :)

For this card, my notes said the statue got some bird poop on it. It quickly became a fine line between painting the statue big enough for the poop to show up in the final image, while also not only being about the statue. In the end I think I went slightly too small with the statue, but whatever!

For this card I kept the colors soft and didn’t go too crazy with the highlights. Some variation and all that.. :)

For the second card, let’s take a look at the Monkey Card! My notes for the monkey card said: the monkey holding a plate of fruits. Alright then:

After painting the base and resizing, I added a couple cherry blossom trees (used the game sprites for this), to give the pic a bit more Tai Ming feeling:

Now! Time for the final Tai Ming Card (unless I’ve forgotten something and lost the notes?!): Echo of Madness!!

I used a slightly different approach when making this card, because I knew I wanted to use the backgrounds from the game for this one. So, I began by making the Echo and a mirror against a transparent background, keeping the center of the mirror transparent as well (my notes were: the Echo is standing in front of a mirror, but he has no mirror image):

Next, I added the game background, and another part of it slightly tilted for the mirror, as well as a speech bubble. Cause why not:

…Aaand the finished card:

Alright! Before posting some fresh non-spoilery (well, kinda) animations made by Fred, let’s take a look at some more housing items!

The theme for this batch is Flying Fortress, (tho I added some other stuff to give you an idea of what it can look like combined with items from other areas). Most of the items are based on sprites found throughout the game, only resized (or completely remade) to fit the grid.

It is my hopes that both the sentry and the broom will be animated to at least move up and down in the air, though it would be pretty cool if the sentry could move around the house on its own. I guess that’s up to Teddy, though, who would have to implement those features :)

And finally!!! A sneak peek of what the final Tai Ming boss will look like:

Hello guys! Another week has gone by at the office, and we’re drawing ever closer to finishing Tai Ming’s third zone (slowly but steadily, as you know…) :)

While Teddy and Fred are busy prototyping the two remaining boss battles (one which actually has a working prototype that we’ve been testing already), I began working on the card appearances and some housing items. Housing will very likely be implemented once Tai Ming is done, so it’s time to get a bunch of items ready.

Anyway! First up, the Thorn-Worm card.

My notes on this card from our design meeting (feels like it happened 100 years ago now), was to have two worms kissing, creating a heart shape. I think we might have decided on this design before the Thorn-Worms were actually made, cause having two of them create a heart shape when they’re so short and fat is kind of heard. I decided to slim ’em down and paint a heart in the middle for clarity.

Maybe not the best design out there, but possibly the most gross?

Next, the Plantae Hostilis card!

My notes for this said: The enemy sprite surrounded by its spawn. Alright then, that’s kind of straight forward? So, it’s what I did. Lots of greens and flowers. I kind of get a very strong RO vibe from this enemy, and I’m not sure why, but I really like it. Kudos to Fred who designed it!

Finished card sprite below:

So, Housing! It’s a subject we touch upon every now and then, but as we get closer to finishing Tai Ming, we also get closer to implementing the dang system (finally)! A while ago, Teddy mentioned we changed the dimensions of the grid we use as a base for the housing system. It used to be much more square, and now it looks like this:

Basically this meant that every single item made before this change needed to be checked and edited or discarded/completely remade depending on how hard it’d be to fit it into the new grid. So I had a very fun (not really haha) day this week where I added all of those housing items to the Housing master document and manually changed and changed each and every one of them.

Some, like the plant above, had to change shape, but could still be used. The red lines indicate the end of its two designated slots, so everything going over those had to be cut.

Others, like the wine barrel below, had to be discarded, and will be remade later. In this case the barrel would become too small if fit into one slow, and it’d be much too big if we edited it to fit it into two/four. So, I’ll redesign the thing later and make a design that works better with the grid size!

There were also some placeholder items Teddy made to test the system out. These were mostly surfaces (tables and the like) and made quickly by copy-pasting other tables in the game. After checking the other items, I went over those and touched ’em up until they resembled actual game sprites more, and made some color variations:

Now we’re finally able to start making batches of new housing items!! I actually went ahead and made a few silly Halloween items on a whim, just to celebrate that we can actually start pumping out housing items for reals:

As you can see in the video, the cauldron is actually a slightly edited version of Fred’s cauldron design for Candy (the witch in Pumpkin Woods). The others were (also as you can see) made from scratch.

A while ago we decided to have a batch of purchasable housing items unlock every time you enter or finish a new area, so it’s very possible these items will unlock once you enter (or complete) Pumpkin Woods. SO I’ll definitely make more items on the theme, and probably a set of basic stuff (like desks and chairs) in suitable colors to match the wallpaper/floor coloring. Also stuff for every other area you unlock… Gonna be a lot of housing items in the future! :)

ALSO, this week was AGDQ and during the event there was an Arcade Mode speedrun! Check it out here:

Happy New Year (and we’re back)!! Have you had a nice holiday? We took about a week off to recharge our batteries, but as of last week we’ve all returned to the office to get back to work.

Remember before christmas, when I (Vilya) started working on the final room of Tai Ming’s third zone? Well, over Christmas I went ahead and finished it!

One big focus of this room is the shelf doors! Since the shelves will hold a bunch of different items, many of which aren’t books, I thought it would be cool to add doors and make them look a bit cooler. Plus, variations and all. So I made four different sets of doors: two types of glass doors (one long and one short) plus two types of wooden doors (one long and one short).

In the end the smaller wooden door didn’t get used, but who knows, maybe it’ll turn up in the future somewhere!

After creating the doors, I began adding a bunch of random props, some which have been used before in various places, as well as some edited stuff:

Next up, painting a bunch of unique props to spice things up a bit:

Finally, here’s the finished past version of this room! Whew:

Now, all great things must come to an end (or so they say), and that includes fancy storage room! Forgotten by all, it has decayed and turned into a mess. Main part of turning this room from past to present state involved creating a ton of holes in the carpets. I also threw some random trash on the ground to make the room feel more messy:

In the end, here’s the rather bleak main version of this room (you’ll actually only spot the past version through a flashback orb):

Now, before Christmas break we had some majord design talks which I may have mentioned in a previous thread. One thing we talked a lot about was Arcade Mode. And there’s some pretty huge changes coming…!

There’s no secret we want to add a bunch of new room types and challenges to Arcade Mode. We have a ton of ideas and it’s likely we’ll begin implementing some of them once we’re done with Tai Ming. However, there are more radical changes coming (though I’m not sure how soon)!

First up, the town will get a lot bigger with many new kinds of special buildings, and you’ll be able to choose which ones will appear first as opposed to the way things are now, where the town slowly updates depending on your total score. This will likely be handled by putting up a bunch of indicators for what will appear where on the map (like signs or character explaining what will appear if you if you ‘choose’ that one in particular).

We’re also reworking how you gain Essence! We’d like to reward everyone more evenly/steadily rather than giving almost no Essence to some and a TON of it to others, depending on how well you do on a run. So if you’re one of those who don’t typically get a lot of essence, you’ll likely get more, and if you tend to get more essence than you can handle, you’ll probably get less.

There MIGHT also be another currency, or rather a rework of an old one: gold! If we implement this, you’ll keep any gold you get on your run + a bonus at the end of each run depending on how things go or how far you get (kind of the way essence works now, but gold won’t be as important so we’re more OK with the pro’s getting more of it). The gold would then be used to unlock the hats and similar items previously exchanged for Essence by the Bishop (he will keep trading perks for essence, but his other shop functions will be moved to one or several other unlockable shops which use gold), as well as other new features.

So basically, Essence is used to unlock perks and town features where you can spend your gold (if the gold part gets implemented)! Whether gold gets added or not kind of depends on whether we feel there are enough cool things to spend your gold on, or if we’d prefer to keep most of it free of charge and use Essence for the rest.

——–

Typically this is where we’d have a bunch of Fred’s animations, but since he’s still working on some upcoming and very spoilerific cutscenes and fights… We’ll keep those to ourselves for a while yet. Hang in there! ;)

Hey guys, Vilya here! This week it’s time for us Swedes to celebrate christmas!

Teddy is already back at his hometown catching up with friends and family and Fred will leave later this week, so it’s time for a little break to recharge our batteries. Before that though, there’s one more weekly recap!

Since we live on the island where our gamedev education was held, every year there’s a couple of fun events for us alumni to attend. Last week was one of them: the Alumni Days!

The Alumni Days consist of 2-3 days where people who graduated come back to school to hold lectures on what it’s like out there ‘in the industry’, answer questions at a panel, plus attend some parties and dinner(s)!

This year was an absolute blast, and there were a lot of great lectures, all of which will eventually be uploaded on this YouTube channel (some are already there). Go check it out if you’re an aspiring dev – there’s already a ton of lectures from previous years too :)

This year’s edition went on from Thursday to Saturday, so there were three days of lectures and hanging out with other devs from our old class (among others)! While living on this isolated island can be quite trying sometimes (everything else is sooo far away), it’s great to be able to meet up with everyone like this and get inspired by other developers.

And now, the present version of the room from last week! Time to break some stuff :3

As with the previous battle room, I added a bunch of random stuff to the floor to make it look more interesting. The pure water has become a sickly green, and the tree has turned a more sinister shade (if there is such a thing as a sinister shade)… :)

Next, time to start working on the final room of the shrine in Tai Ming’s third zone! And it’s quite a large one…

So, this room is a kind of storage/library room where a lot of artifact and treasures will be housed. Because painting all these items will take a lot of time, I decided to split this post in 2-4 parts (depending on how much stuff I end up recording/creating GIFs of).

In this first part, it’s all about the basic stuff, creating the backbone of the room: floors, walls, bookcases/shelves that will contain the items. In the next 1-2 parts I’ll be making a bunch of GIFs of the items and shelf-doors, etc, being added! And of course, after that we need to make a present version of the room as well :)

After step 1, here’s what we got:

Some of you might remember Professor Pine, the guys behind the “diary entries” of Flying Fortress? Well, time to meet the guy!

Actually, you won’t exactly meet him… But you WILL watch him do some talking many years ago, through a flashback orb! What could he be doing in Tai Ming?

With my parts of Tai Ming almost being finished, it’s time to start looking ahead and think about what’s coming next. First up, we’re gonna update Arcade Mode, adding the Mt. Bloom and Tai Ming floors (and after that likely spend some time adding bonus things – Housing for example). Once I complete the final things for Tai Ming (the final room + cards) that means I’ll be focusing on Arcade Mode backgrounds and a TON of furniture, which will be a lot of fun!

After that, it’s finally time to start with the next area… I’ve already completed most of the art for the desert, which is supposed to come after Tai Ming, so for me that means I’ll begin playing around with the harbor town that comes after it. Then there’s only two temples/dungeons left! I can’t believe we’ve actually come this far, haha. Though it’s been 5 years already it feels like we began working on Grindea yesterday. Time flies when you have fun, and working on this game has definitely been a blast from the start!

Definitely looking forward to another year of fun gamedev, and I hope you’ll all stay with us through our journey! After all, without you guys there would be no game. So thank you for the support, and I hope you have a happy holiday/merry christmas/just a wonderful time :D

See you next year!!

This week we uploaded another patch to the frontline beta, featuring a bunch of smaller updates! The biggest changes, from the patch notes:

World Map Completion: Based on a suggestion on our forums, we’ve added completion tracking for the World Map! It tells you how many cards, drops, fishes, quests and secrets you have yet to find in any given area. This should help people figure out what it is they’re missing for that juicy 100 % completion! Note that the Achievements and Crafting completion is still tracked via their own menus.

Damage Numbers: The new default setting for displaying damage numbers is “Composite”, which turns your damage into one big number per enemy instead of many small numbers. We did this change mainly because some builds dish out so many hits that the old damage numbers cluttered everything, and in multiplayer this happened pretty much regardless of builds. It also makes damage over time a bit more readable, as well as how much damage a flamethrower or blade flurry cast actually does in the end! For people unhappy with this change, there’s a “Classic” option that mimics the old style, as well as an even more streamlined option called “Minimalistic”, and of course… an option to turn off damage numbers completely!

HP Bars: Enemies now have HP bars above their heads by default. These appear after an enemy has taken damage, and fade away after a while if no new damage is taken! Also, low HP allies in multiplayer also have their HP displayed above their heads. Both of these types of HP bars can be disabled, or set to always appear if an enemy or player is below full HP.

There’s also the accessory shop, among other things (which we already began preparing in last week’s post), and a bunch of new characters!

Joining his sister in the store will be this young fellow! Yes, it’s a guy, you know the drill, Vilya can’t draw guys… though I think they do look a bit manlier now…maybe (ignoring the braids)??

Anyway! Being the heir to their father’s business, he’s sick and tired of the boring stuff and would like nothing more than to become a collector. Perhaps there’s some way you can help him? We actually haven’t decided on any quests surrounding this family but it would be pretty cool :)

There’s also the father of the accessory store’s shop keeper and her brother! This is one famous merchant, visiting to check up on his daughter who has moved abroad to open up a shop of her own:

As mentioned before, he’d like nothing more than for one of his children to take over his business, but with the daughter setting up a store of her own and his son’s lacking interest… Whatever will become of it?!

Now, remember the person entertaining a bunch of artifacts in the first part of Tai Ming?

Well, they’re back! Only this time in the second zone! Some of the artifacts have been replaced, and this Helmet appears instead!

Not much is currently known about Helmet, but I’m quite sure Teddy has come up with some awesome dialogue for this guy (or girl). I mean, life has to be kind of cool as a helmet, right?

…Right?

Now, as always before a patch, there’s a bunch of smaller things to be edited or fixed!

First up, the accessory-siblings. We adjusted the skin tone of the brother slightly to make him fit in better with the rest of his family, and changed the hair color of the shop owner girl for the same reason:

We also played around with the Accessory shop title, which previously was called “Accessory & Co” but is “Ruby’s Rubies”. Our current favorite (and the one who made it to the patch) is the middle one:

Next up, we wanted the Accessory shop to stand out a bit more, so I was tasked with changing its colors! Below is the previous version as well as two color alternatives for the shop. We’ll probably go for the standard wall color, though in the future I might go back and edit the houses in Evergrind City in general.. Who knows what colors the walls will end up having then?

Before:

After, version 1 and version 2:

The ruins in the west needed their own title to appear as you enter the area as well as a name! We settled for Ancient Ruins for now, subject to change if we come up with something else… :)

Some of you noticed the chest closing in the present after you opened it and the water is low. Fear not, it has been solved – the chest will now remain open. Though where did the plants go? :o

Then, since a flashback scene with Mana and the children (Zhamla and Tessen) has been added, so I got to make a bunch of new expressions for our favorite nanny! :)

Finally……. Back to the third Tai Ming map and that old shrine!!

Aside from being a place to battle enemies in the present, this room will also hold another flashback orb, with the people of Tai Ming enlisting the help of the Flying Fortress crew to deal with a certain threat.

Since I don’t know exactly how much of the room will be shown in the flashback orb yet, I’m keeping the past version quite bare for now. I’ll probably add more decorations once I know where and how the cutscene will play out :)

Next week we’ll continue working on the third part of Tai Ming, and since the holidays are coming up and we’ll spend some time apart we’ve begun having more design meeting so everyone knows what’s coming next in the game! For those cases when we want to work but can’t get a hold of the others to ask questions, you know. Therefore, I expect the next two posts (or so) will contain more design talk and mentions of upcoming features…. But we’ll see :)

This week we continue to prepare things for a mini-patch adding the new features we talked about last week (new damage numbers etc)!

Remember the Accessory shop from the last recap? Well, someone has to run it! Time for another portrait~

This girl comes from the Merchant Isles and has moved to Evergrind City to open her Accessory shop! Her father and brother will be visiting as well, checking out her new business, so they will be upcoming portraits later on :)

Last week I also mentioned adding some stuff to the world map. A big thanks to Own who came up with the great idea in this thread :)

So, for a long time now we’ve wanted to add some things to the world map in order to give more clarity for people wishing to 100% the game and as a general incentive to explore each area a bit more thoroughly (if you see how many secrets you have left you feel more inclined to find the rest, right?)

So anyway! We have two sets of additions. First, a bunch of icons on the left side, indicating (in order) Enemy drops, Cards, Quests, Fishes and Secrets. Next to these icons will be a counter showing how many you’ve got vs how many there are (for example 06/10). These numbers are map specific and will change depending on which part of the map you’re hovering over.

The second part is the pet and map counter in the lower right corner of the map, indicating how many pets and maps you’ve found vs hos many there are. These are global and will show the same number regardless of which area you’ve currently selected.

We also plan on adding a percentage next to each area name, so in the case above, it would say “Evergrind City 48%” indicating I have achieved 48% completion of said area. As some things get added in patches or you unlock new quests as you progress through the story, it will be possible to get 100% on one area, only to have it revert back to say 70% as new content gets unlocked. When this happens you’ll get a notice letting you know your map has been updated, and there will be a “New” sign above each part of the map with new stuff to do/find :)

Now, with the world map expanding and new areas being added, it’s time to rebuild and add to the world map :D

First of all, it’s time to rebuild some of the puzzle pieces that make up the world map. These will be changed further as we go along and add the desert map & the maps past it. But first things first! This time, it’s the upper left corner that has been adjusted.

Before:

After:

Next, time to take a look at what happens beneath those puzzle pieces… Previously, we hadn’t added the ancient ruins above the western Evergrind fields, so there was no need to include it on the world map. Now that it’s been implemented, no more excuses!

We also expanded the size of the winter area a bit in the process, filling out some empty spaces and making sure the ruins don’t look too big compared to their size in the game.

Before:

After:

But what about Tai Ming, you ask? Of course, the old town needs some kind of indicator as well! We’ve solved that by adding a speech bubble indicating the city’s past or present state (depending on how far along the story you are) once you enter the town for the first time:

Finally, I made the stars which will indicate when you’ve achieved 100% completion of an area. I thought my 200+ hour character Masken who I use to bug test things would have a ton of these stars, but turns around I’m a terrible Collector – no stars for me :(

How many will you get once this gets uploaded to the beta? :D

Finally, a brief return to the third Tai Ming zone! The exit/meeting room in it’s present state:

It’s always fun painting broken glass and vases, so I got to have some fun with this! Also had to split the table in two, so the flashback orb can be placed in the middle, showing everyone around the table!

Also, no enemies in this room so no problem having a bunch of props lying around :)