A Mixed Bag

It's been a while since we did one of these posts, right?! So today, I thought we'd take a look at a few of the smaller tasks I've been doing these past weeks. 

Our main focus has been finishing up Mt Bloom, so to begin with, here's the backgrounds that will be used to show your character in the menu, as well as the backdrop for the enemy codex:

Then, since we started implementing the Caveling NPCs..:

 .. I had to make a couple of new portraits for them! (I'm not super happy about how their little living area looks, so I'll probably rework that in a future update, though not sure when or if it'll even be before the game is patched). Anyways! Here are the four portrait variations, which are all basically the same but with different colors:

Ideally I'd like to have their patches be at different places, but since I'm literally drowning in background work right now (as I'm typing this I'm in the midst of creating 10+ backgrounds in a two week period, sheesh), I'll keep them like this and probably edit them later, most likely once everything else in the game is done.

Next up, we decided that instead of having the Phase Puzzle blocks be the same, we'd split the decorations in three parts (top, right and left for the mirror block and top and bottom for the regular block), so the game can mix and match decorations and create even more variations on its own!

Basically, what happens is that the game uses the basic block with no decorations what so ever, and then we have aaall the various decorations saved separately, split in 3 so that the top part is saved separately etc. Then the game will select top, right and left part at random (or perhaps keep one side default clean) when you enter the area for the first time.

I'm really happy with this change since there's a lower chance of too many repeat blocks, than if we'd just use the same 10 over and over. More variation = yay!

Okay and lastly, I made some tiny improvements on stuff I did on the first Time Travel Zone. First up, the zen garden thingy:

Basically just cleaned it up a bit, making the texture a bit less intense. Then finally, I decided to add some more greenery to the fighting practice area:

 I think it looks a little better and less stiff now, at least :) Now... Back to backgrounds!! Whew...