Vilya's Workblog

In this next and final part of the desert house, it's time to add some details. Tassels, carpet fringes, carrots and half-dead plants are some of the things that are on the menu for this video. Check it out here:

In the animation department, Fred delivers some more NPCs this week. We want the desert town to feel bustling indeed, so we need a ton of people populating the area. So, here's another batch of people, featuring a girl sitting by the port swinging her legs, a guy applying sunscreen, and two people walking around town:

Second part of the desert house! Time to add wall decors, a chest, another flower in a jar, the bed in another direction, a shelf - and some poor plants failing to grow that will likely only be seen in this house - they are having some troubles with their crops in this harsh desert!

Now it's time to move on to some interiors. The first building we'll do is the little farmer's hut in one of the desert maps. The first house in any new area is very important, as it will set the tone and style for the interior in the surrounding buildings as well. As such, I'll be making a ton of new items for this house alone, and have decided to split up the work in a couple of posts!

In this first post, we begin in the lower left part of the house, creating a bench, a table, a bad, some cushions to sit on and some decorations in the form of carpets, a new flower pot and a small table cloth:

And here's what it looks like so far:

Time to continue with the cave system! Here's the final cave, the one I never decorated last week when I did the others. You see, this is a very special cave, where there will be a boss fight of some sort... But I will say no more!

Anyway, this cave is a little more moist than the rest of the desert, and so there will be some greenery in here. Also some strange old rags, and a place to sleep. How odd! Anyway, here's the WIP video:

Time for another update on what goes on behind the scenes so to speak!

First of all, we've verified our Discord server (a while ago actually, but since we haven't talked about the Discord server much on this blog I thought it was time to mention it)! What this means is basically that we got a fancy new invite link, which I would recommend you to use if you're interested in joining our awesome community for a chat: https://discord.gg/secretsofgrindea

Come hang out with me, Teddy and the amazing people of our server :)

We've also recently had our annual meeting! Development wise, this isn't really affecting anything (except that we need to actually have the meeting), but it's a good opportunity to make sure everything's working as it should business wise. It's sometimes easy to forget that being an indie developer is not just a matter of doing art or programming day in and day out: sometimes we have to take care of the boring stuff as well (such as financial statements and other joyous things).

Since keeping track of our finances and making sure everything we do is properly reported to the Swedish government is something that very much affects development (in that it eats a lot of time), we've made the decision to get rid of as much of that as possible. In other words: hire someone to do it for us. The three of us have always taken pride in doing as much as possible by ourselves, but we feel that this bookkeeping aspect has little to do with actually making the game, and paying someone to do it for us will unlock more development time for Teddy, who has done those things so far.

And in other streamlining news, we've made it a lot easier to test new maps. Previously, whenever I made a sketch of a new area, Teddy had to manually load the background into the game and update the build (which can take a while). Then what often happened as we ran around the map with our characters, is that I'd find really dumb flaws that are quite obvious once you see the sketch in a more realistic setting with the full interface and all that.

So now, Teddy has made it possible for me to upload any background I need to test in the game simply by replacing a .png file in the build's folder. This will then automatically add the map to the game, which can then be accessed through a shortcut in character select. Now I can try out the maps myself and fix all those obvious flaws before involving Fred and Teddy at all! This way, when we finally try out the map together in multiplayer, I've already removed distracting polish-issues like the one below:

Finally, let's end the week with another portrait. This is a very important NPC, based on our composer: Andrew Riley of Lucky Lion Studios! His NPC will, naturally, be a musician, who among other things will appear in Arcadia to help you change the town music.

In story mode, he'll be hanging out in the desert town, playing music to anyone who passes by. Maybe he'll make an appearance somewhere else as well? Who can tell!

Finally, it's time to decorate everything! Starting with the first floor, I added a bunch of crystals in the walls, more mushroom types, and a bunch of small rocks to decorate the areas as a whole:

Then, it's on to apply it all to all of the other maps! For this map I also created a stair leading to the upper floor:

...and for these, stairs leading to the lower floors. Here you can also see the difference between the two maps, making them quite distinct from one another even though they're the same size:

As you may notice, the cave with the alleged boss fight is missing from this lineup: that's because I will make a different kind of decoration for that area! Stay tuned ;)

Time for another portrait, and another video! I decided to record this one since I was making this portrait at home rather than the office, and the quick export feature that I use to make the images that make up the GIF is broken there (I should fix it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet). So for now, here's another video featuring the creation of one of the card players in the saloon:

The next step is of course to repeat the whole process of the previous map and create aaaall the rest of them in their most basic form to begin with: meaning walls, floors and any stairs/dropdowns/doorways:

The room above will be used twice for two different caves, and you'll be able to tell them apart by the decorations.

Next, this big boss room will be cut off at the top...

...to make sure you don't spot the boss if you were to enter the cave from this side:

Hey guys! It's a new week and new adventures. First, though, let's take a look at some of those last minute fixes for Arcadia.

Some of you might have noticed some very wonky backgrounds for some of the Mt Bloom challenges! This is due to a miscommunication between me and Teddy: he had made a couple of backgrounds by copying and pasting random pieces of old backgrounds into something that fit with the phase challenges he designed. However, he forgot to tell me about these and so when the patch initially launched, it launched with the WIP bakgrounds - oops!

This has been fixed, though it hasn't been updated in the game yet. For now, enjoy the rather wonky WIP versions, haha!

Another thing that will be added soon-ish are the achievements for the two new floors. As always, there will be one achievement for reaching the floors, respectively, as well as one for clearing all the available challenges and for getting S-rank on both floors of the same theme.

Other than that, it's more bug fixing and fixes on the menu for Teddy while me and Fred will continue on to the desert! Fun times :)

Hey guys! It's Fred's Friday in more than one way! Today is Fred's birthday and we're all going out to celebrate after I've made this post. Wohoo!

Alright, with Arcadia finally out of the way, it's time for Fred to return to animating stuff in the desert: namely more NPCs. These fellows will hang out around the beach, chilling in the sweet weather:

So lots of more portraits for me to make! Exciting times. Finally, to end this week, this cute little animation of the carpenter. It will appear in Arcadia, but I didn't post it before and it's just too cute to skip even though it's already available in the game. Enjoy!

Hey guys! Sorry this is posted late - yesterday was very busy with lots of last minute scrambling to get some final graphics done on my part. Why? Because the revamped Arcadia is live on frontline!!! Wohoo!

If you wanna help us test the new and improved Arcade Mode, please go ahead by swapping into the frontline beta: more on that here. Just remember there are still some things missing, such as sound effects, and that the mode can be a little bug prone in these early stages. However, the new features are all up and running and you'll be able to build your town step by step, in whatever order you prefer.

Teddy will continue to update with bug fixing patches the next few days, if you find any bugs please go ahead and report them in our bug reports forum.

If you're interested in the full patch notes, you can find them here. Otherwise go ahead and update your game and try out this new mode! And please let us know what you think :D

Next up we have another portrait! It's time to start making portraits for those merchants in the market area, so here's the potion salesman. Here's a look at what he looks like in his stand, without the roof covering half his head:

And here's the sprite, WIP and finished version:

Time to move on to those cave systems! To begin with, there's the matter of converting the walls of the desert area to something that fits better with the interiors of a cave, and make a floor to go with it.

Then, since this particular map is a little special, it will house a number of mushroom-like cacti. And some random decorations in the shape of mining carts and rails. I'll probably return to this map later and add a bit more detail, but as usual, I try to make a basic version of each room first before adding more personality as we move on.

The progress:

Finished room, for now:

Alright! Time to start working on those interiors and cave systems. We'll begin with one of the most exciting places found in the middle of the desert: the Saloon!

As mentioned before, this place will be home to a number of shady people: cavelings, fae and humans from all over Grindea! Including a few old friends, such as the Black Ferrets... There will be piano playing, dancing and drinking. Maybe even a quest or two, oh my!

The music in the video is actually the Saloon theme, which will be playing in this building. Unfortunately I messed up the looping a little bit in a few places during the video, but you probably get the overall idea anyway :)

Fred is, of course, also focused on getting everything ready for the Arcadia patch! Here's the final version of the Grindea blessing statues, as they open to reveal your blessing:

A mysterious egg has been made as well (as seen earlier in the drop appearance I made)! Here's Fred's progress of finding out which face best suits the egg (it's an epic dragon egg, I'll have you know!):

If you've built the aquarium, you'll naturally want to catch a bunch of Mount Bloom's fishes upon reaching those floors, so they needed animations as well:

Finally, Professor Pine makes an appearance, and since he only existed from the back before, he needed to get a sprite showing him from the front and side as well:

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