Vilya's Workblog

Next up we have the ghost scientist I think I mentioned before - this person will appear in the lab in Evergrind City in the beginning of the game, where she's investigating the spirit world. Later on, she'll play a part in your ghost ship journey:

The ghost ship plans continue to unfold, and the next big things we've decided on is to take the player on a strange dream, caused by the ghostly presences on the ship. In this dream, you'll find yourself back in Startington (?!), but it's a quiet, somewhat "wrong" version of itself. Here you need to solve four different challenges in order to find your way back to the ghost ship and continue on your journey.

There will be things in this dream referencing events that have happened in the game this far, with each building in Startington holding its own challenge. In one, you'll need to battle a ton of slimes searching for that one card, in another you'll be pressured to show your skill with the shield. A third urges you to remember you friends, and a forth the dreams you had for the future.

Needless to say, this will be a ~~slightly~~ very surreal world, and we'll be hard pressed to make sure things have just the right amount of eeriness. We've had a ton of crazy, creepy ideas for this part, but our intention isn't to turn into a psychological horror game - we just want approximately 5% of that feeling!

Right now we're still undecided exactly how this place will look graphically - we've got ideas ranging from having it be just regular Startington (without the people - and probably without the song, making it a too quiet, too still version of itself) all the way to going full sepia-toned, dark, with shadows and mists lurking around the edges of the screen. We'll see where it all ends up, and here I think we'll need a lot of help from you guys as you test it out in Frontline.

After the Tai Ming storyline, things have taken a turn for the darker already, but as I said, we don't want it to go full horror. It'll be very interesting to get this right, but I think ~~and hope~~ we will!

In the animation department, Fred continues with the desert stuff and has made a really cool death animation for the Solem, which kind of gets frozen in place before it disintegrates:

There's also a lovely little salamander in progress, which we want running around the place here and there, as a purely decorative detail. Here's a bunch of suggestions he made, with the one we ended up choosing the the red circle:

And of course, it needs a few animations as well, so here's one where it's sticking its tongue out, one where it runs off, and one where it escapes by digging its way into the sand - how cute!

Teddy has been hard at work implementing all of Fred's NPCs, too, and for the fun of it he decided to put most of them in one screen, just to see what it'd look like. Have a peek:

And with that, back to work! See you next time~

This weeks portrait features the pianist, a guy who, as you may have guessed, plays the piano (in the saloon, the be specific). Since he's in the saloon I went with the theme and made him sort of buff looking. Otherwise not much else to say about this guy for now!

WIP:

Finished sprite:

Having had another design meeting about the ghost ship and we we want to happen in there, we've decided on dividing the ship in three parts. The first part will be where you first meet the ghost captain, and where you'll get the skill that allows you to enter the spirit world. This part of the ship will be mostly storage, so there will be rooms with lots of crates, barrels, buckets and other kinds of storage. The ship will have had lots of cool cargo, so hopefully we'll be able to make this part look interesting.

The second part (and second floor) will house the living quarters for the sailors that ran the ship. Here we'll have their sleeping quarters (great halls with many beds), a kitchen, dining hall, and such. There might also be one or two optional friendly ghosts here, who might give you a quest or two.

On the third floor will be a more luxe area: here they'll have a grand entertainment hall with a bar and ghastly piano playing by itself, there will be huts for high paying passengers, and finally, the path to the captains own room...

We've also talked about adding another type of "enemy" (sketched above), which you actually won't be able to kill! These things are in fact armors that were part of a shipment, which have now been possessed. So long as you're in the regular world, they'll just lie on the floor blocking your way - but once you enter the spirit world, the armors will come to life and float in to the air towards you. If they get too close, they'll attack, but you won't be able to damage them back. Instead, your only option is to leave the spirit world and have them fall back unto the ground - a mechanic that might also be helpful in certain puzzles...

On a similar note, during these talks we've decided that the long you are in the spirit world, the more ghostly it becomes. As such, spending a long time in the spirit world will cause shadowlike arms or spikes appear out of walls or even the floor, damaging and slow you as you go. If you've spent a long time in the spirit world, you might even begin to see hints of these things in the regular world as well...

Speaking of the ghost ship, we've been making a ton of prototypes for various challenges and mechanics we'd like to include. First we have a challenge where you need to go between various platforms, and the only way of doing so is entering the spirit world. Only problem is, there's an angry ghost attacking you if you enter his domain - so you can't stay too long or you'll take guaranteed damage.

We're currently considering whether you'll fall down if you leave the spirit world in the midst of a bridge. The other idea would be that you simply can't leave until you're on solid ground. Since I'm not a fan of hindering the player from using a mechanic like that, I feel like it'd be better to allow the player to leave and fall down - which would presumably lead to you having to redo the challenge and/or losing some hp.

Next, a variation on the same theme. Here we have a prototype where you battle enemies in the 'real' world, in which you do less damage than you normally would on a similar enemy. Entering the spirit world, you do full damage, but you also get chased by the angry ghost from before! Decisions, decisions...

Finally, and old classic we'd like to include somehow: the good old phase shift puzzle - ghost version. Here, you need to swap between the spirit world and normal world on the fly (ha!), in order to make your way across.

We have more ideas, and will likely do some more - as well as some tweaks of these, before we settle on what exactly we'd like to include in this dungeon. It's a good start, though!

Aaaand we return, slightly more well rested and ready to get back into the action!

Now that the desert and desert town is in place, it's time to update the world map into a somewhat final version (there's still the ghost ship remaining, but I'll easily be able to add that later, as it's in the midst of the water anyways)!!

Let's take a look:

So basically, this is what the world map will look like after you've visited all of the areas (except the ghost ship):

So exciting! Only one more little ship to add, and then it's all done. I've reworked the shadows that covers each area before you've explored it slightly as well, so you'll notice things will look a bit different once this has been implemented. There will be 12 pieces to uncover in total, once the ghost ship has been added (13 if you count Tai Ming - but the Tai Ming piece of the map isn't visible at all until you've actually been there). Right now I think there are a couple more than that since we wanted to make sure we had space for the areas we hadn't designed yet, and their shapes look a little random. The water will be visible from the start, giving the map some more color from the beginning, as well.

Exciting times! This actually feels like such a huge milestone, even if the ghost ship is missing. I mean, even if the ship is missing - it looks complete on a whole different level compared to before. It's been a long journey, but you can finally start to see it all coming together!

Work on the math puzzle continues, with Fred having made activation animations for each of the numbers and enemy buttons:

Teddy has started prototyping the puzzle as well, with a few edits compared to what we initially wanted. In our first design, we wanted the player to be able to make any path they wanted, however, as we play tested this it felt boring and, honestly, extremely easy. So instead, we made the redesign you can see below - where each of the buttons start inactivated except one, and as you step on it, 1-3 new buttons will activate depending on where you are in the puzzle and which buttons you activated previously. This made for a much more challenging version of the puzzle which we appreciated a lot more!

In the GIF below you need to start the puzzle on the block with a 0 and end with the block on the opposite end that's also a 0. The second 0 is a placeholder for a = sign button which hadn't been made when this prototype was added:

In this second prototype, you can see a basic version of the puzzle where enemy buttons create an encounter once you're done with the puzzle. The same rules apply here, you need to match the number with the target number (which in the future will be illustrated with magic flames rather than simple text next to the puzzle ;)), but on your path you will also cross a number of enemy buttons that will activate upon puzzle completion:

As you can tell, there's a lot of graphics missing here - such as, you know, the actual caves these puzzles will be in(!) but now that we have a working prototype we can at least be certain that we do like this type of puzzle even outside of the theoretical design (you'd be surprised how many ideas sound great on paper that don't translate well at all when they're actually put to the test).

Now, next week we'll actually take a short break to recharge our batteries while the sunlight's still with us, so the blog will be paused briefly, with new posts returning as usual on Monday the 23rd!

Hope you guys also enjoy your summer, wherever you are, and see you soon! ...And should you miss us too much, feel free to join our Discord where we hang out pretty much daily even during the vacation (even if we don't always write, we watch over you always! 8))

Next, let's decide on the names for these new couple of areas!

As you might guess, Dragonbone Dunes is the name of the desert, while Port Monnaie is the name of the port town. Now, Dragonbone Dunes gets its name from the dragon bones and dragon decorations from Map01, but we will add more dragon decorations here and there in the map to make sure the name ties in well to what you actually see, even if you're not on the first map anymore.

Anyway, since we're about to implement this area properly, it was time to make backgrounds for the enemy codex and the player sprite in the main menu respectively:

We also realized the path from Map03 to Map04 of the desert didn't line up quite as well as they could have when zoning from one into the other, so we decided to slightly edit the exit from Map03 to better align with how it looks in Map04.

In the GIF below you can see what it looks like when I put the entrance to Map04 next to the exit of Map03:

As you can see, there's a path in Map04 as well, so I added the beginnings of one in Map03 to match it:

Finally, we decided to amp up the entrance to the math puzzle cave a little, adding some decorative numbers (and colors) as decoration:

More to come... :)

There are still a few portraits left, and this guy seems like he's relaxing by a table near the beach. What a lovely idea in this hot weather (we're in the midst of the Swedish summer over here)!

Finished sprite:

Speaking of the desert, things are still not quite done over there, so over the next couple of days (and lets face it - probably weeks) we'll work on editing and adding details to improve the overall feel.

First up, making sure the maps line up properly! Outside the walls on the right side of the town, a lot of grass grows around the exit. In order to make the transition between the maps less jarring, we realized we needed to make sure there was grass on this side in town, as well:

Next, a pretty major change in mechanic when it comes to going from what we call Map03 of the desert, to Map04 where the Saloon and entry to the desert town is. Previously, we wanted the player to use a season orb only accessible through a cave in Map02 in order to get past the water. Since we already used the season orbs once in the area, though, we decided that's enough, and removed the water altogether!

Now your goal is to get there and push a wagon forward and out of the way instead! Which gives an added bonus of being able to go directly to the left into Map04 without having to walk around through Map02 once again!

Speakin of Map02, we realized that we had put the entry to the puzzle cave you need to pass through to get to the area above, sliightly too high on the map, which meant the interface was blocking parts of it as you enter. In order to fix this, we simply moved it further down:

Finally, for the season orb we decided to keep, we wanted to make a snow effect to show very clearly what part of the area gets affected by the winter magic:

Moving on with the Ghost Ship plans, we have a bunch of enemy ideas we'd like to see in this final 'true' dungeon. Some have been planned for a long time - remember the sailors from Merchant Isles with strange hats? They were designed that way specifically so you'd recognize their ghost forms on the ship.

So basically, we knew we wanted Merchant Isles sailors in some shape. What we'll likely do is have weapons (likely swords and such) floating around the rooms in the 'regular world'. These can attack you, but you won't be able to defeat them - at best you'll be able to disable the weapon for a short time - unless you enter the spirit world. In the spirit world, you'll notice they are in fact skeleton ghosts holding the weapons, and these fellows you can attack normally.

There will be two versions of the sailor enemies - one that does regular attacks and one magician type that buffs enemies or debuffs the players. The buffs/debuffs include making an enemy elite, or cursing the player with Reaper's Blade (the utility skill also found in the player skill tree).

As mentioned, you'll be able to make the regular attack ghosts lose their weapons a while into combat. If this happens, they will get a skill in which they can dislocate their own skeleton arm and throw at (boomerang-style) at the player, before picking up their weapon again.

We also wanted a new and more dangerous version of the Ghosties from Pumpkin Woods, only these more dangerous Haunties drip ectoplasm which drains SP while you walk in it - and might also drain the ghost meter which allows you to stay in the spirit world (if we decide to include the meter in the final spirit world design).

Finally, since it's an old ship that has taken in some water here and there, we wanted to include a sea creature of some sort, and right now we're leaning towards a pretty straight forward hermit crab that will serve as a tanky kind of enemy in the group.

Since we're still in the middle of the desert, these will probably not be implemented in the near future, and as such it's possible we'll change these designs in some ways. At the moment though, we think we're headed in the right direction, and hopefully it means starting work on the ghost ship enemies will go smoothly once we're done with the desert areas!

Meanwhile, Fred has been working on the desert enemies. Here's a zoomed in version of those birds that will attack you after hatching out of eggs, cause it's simply too cute to pass up on showing:

We've also been working on the Solem laser! It's now a lot brighter and more intense, clearly showing the difference between simply aiming and actually attacking you:

Fred has also been working on the puzzle plates we'll use in those math puzzles mentioned. Here you can see the enemy plates as well, so cute:

In the end, it's likely we'll adjust the colors of this - but for now this is the basic idea of what they'll look like!

You'd think we'd be finished with the desert graphics soon, but oh no, now that things are finally started to get implemented, there are a ton of edits that needs to be made - some things you just don't realize need fixing before they have been properly implemented...

First up, we have the exterior of the desert ruin. Now that the ruins will be slightly bigger than we first though, we felt it needed to look just a little bigger on the outside too:

Then we have this area, which never got finished in the first place:

Earlier we actually thought we'd have some sort of desert storm challenge there, where you'd have to navigate your way through a desert storm, barely able to see anything. Since we didn't have the details or layout for that ironed out yet, I just left that part of the desert empty. Since then, we changed things around and put the map with the saloon to the left instead, so now it was simply time to complete the map.

We've also decided to add a cave right before the season orb below, to give you a bit more of a challenge other than simply walking around to hit it (it will come as no surprise that you need to hit it to get across to the other side):

In this cave we'll have a new type of puzzle, one we're actually quite excited about! This one will be all about math, having you step on plates to make up a number shown inside the cave. Basic sketch below:

We plan on having three puzzles like this inside the cave, of varying difficulty (one will likely have 9 plates, another 20). One will also feature plates with enemies on them, which means you'll essentially build your own encounter once you step out of the plates. Fun times!

Final part of the desert ruins! This time we get into the details, adding those small things that tie everything together.

As you might have guessed, there will be a puzzle of some sort in the middle. While we know approximately what this will look like, we haven't ironed out the specifics yet so for now it will remain empty.

Aside from that, here's what it looks like in its completed state:

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