Today was one of those days. I started off recoloring the slime hat, so there's now a red version. Then I had to make an additional expression for the Bag, your ridiculous sidekick. Then I went on to crop 24 different portraits using the system mentioned in yesterday's post. Then I went on to resize and redesign parts of the Fae village, Santa Fae, which you'll be visiting soon if you're in the Secrets of Grindea beta:
We're much happier with this version of the fae village. It's feels more compact, with the space being used much more efficiently. It's no fun just running and running without ever getting anywhere, after all (do ignore the trees overlapping eachother - they are cropped in from a .png and won't take distance into consideration like in the game)!
Lastly, I started sketching and trying out ideas for what the new Skills & Talents interface should look like. We haven't mentioned the Talent system anywhere yet, but it'll basically work like stats but with more advanced options. I'll make a more detailed post about it tomorrow!
Here's a sneak peek of how far I've come with the rendered version:
Just a very basic WIP, as you can see - still lots of work to be done. If you have a keen eye and play the game a lot, there's a couple of changes here that you may notice. The biggest one is of course that we've completely removed the bronze points. The reason for this is that we felt like we had too many charge levels with very little change between them. Before it would look like this:
1. Uncharged - Basic version of the spell. Triggered by simply tapping the skill button
2. Bronze Charge - Small bonus to the spell, no visual upgrade. Triggered by holding down the skill button a short while on any level (unlocked with your very first skillpoint)
3. Silver Charge - Additional bonus to the spell, visual upgrade. Triggered by holding down the skill button a little longer than Bronze Charge (unlocks with your first silver point).
4. Gold Charge - Bigger bonus to the spell, with a bigger visual upgrade. Triggered by holding the button even longer (unlocks with your first gold point).
5. Final Charge - The spell's ultimate, basically the Gold charge but with some additional effects (unlocks when you max the spell)
By removing the bronze points, we can also remove one charge level and in doing so save you some charge-up time and focus on making the charged versions of the spells more interesting. In this case, we're basically removing the Final Charge, since we felt it would be more epic that your final charge is the one with the biggest visual upgrade. Therefore, what is the silver charge today will now unlock with your first gold point, and the gold charge will unlock once you've maxed the spell completely.
Interesting idea with the charges. It also saves time from programming and animating one extra different effect per skill. A little bit of flavor and diversity was lost, but time was gain. Which means the team can focus on more central points of the game and at some later time add more skill effects!
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