Vilya's Workblog

Ahh- sorry for the late post, I forgot to press 'publish' after I finished writing it... ;_;

Since I moved on to doing more and more Ghost Ship stuff, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering where the patch is. The answer to that is that Teddy and Fred are busy finishing up the possibly most time consuming part of each new update: the polish and cutscenes!

Naturally, this post is quite spoiler heavy, so beware!

Here's a small collection of things they've been working on most recently, starting with a new cool effect for when you complete a math/enemy puzzle and the enemies spawn:

There's an animation for when you complete another puzzle, causing the dragon to grab hold onto the globe and a door to open:

There's this effect when the rock comes tumbling into the ancient decorations in the ruins:

And the spawning animation for one of the bosses, the Sol-Gem:

Each of these things have to be properly timed, have the right amount of effects (both in terms of animations and particle effects generated by the engine), and about a hundred other tweaks to make. For the Sol-Gem spawning alone, we've gone through about four different versions before settling for the version you see above!

Some might ask whether it's worth all the time we spend on these details, but we're all very convinced it is! I'd say these last percentages of the progress are the ones that matter the most, as the timing of a couple of animations alone can be what changes something from feeling lackluster to feeling polished and thought through!

Speaking of the patch timing, we finally have a rough estimate, where we hope it will be ready to be uploaded in 1-2 weeks! Let's cross our fingers there are no more unforeseen delays happening until then :D

The second portrait this week is that of a kid, living with her family in a hut in the desert.

The family has a bit of an issue with growing vegetables (it's extremely difficult in the heat of the Dragonbone Dunes!), but luckily for her, her mother is an expert when it comes to growing carrots, which happens to be her favorite food.

After discussing things with Teddy and Fred, I decided to make another room for the Ghost Ship's first floor, which will be a fight room! In other words, this is a room where you'll battle a few of the ship's enemies, and since it's made just for that, the sizing isn't hugely important - there will always be enemy setups that fit any sized room.

So, I went ahead with the mission to create a rather simple room where there won't be a lot of things in the way for the players as they fight their way through:

And here we have the finished piece:

One Fred finished his part of the desert, he'll decorate the water and such as usual, so it'll feel lively enough!

The portrait work continues, there's still a few needed. Today it's time for the guard, which look similar to the previous guards in the game, but slightly edited to fit the desert. Sprite below:

In Evergrind city, the guards had large hats that covered most of their heads, while in Tai Ming they had very small hats. In the desert, they will have medium sized hats, and will go without their uniforms, sporting a bare upper body in order to deal with the heat:

Alright, let's get back to that ghost ship. It's about time I started making a few backgrounds for the place, so to start things off I'm going to make the very first room of the dungeon!

We have a pretty detailed sketch of what the first floor will look like, but as there are a couple of question marks in regards to sizing (there's a boss battle and a puzzle that's yet to be designed), I think this might actually be the only room I'll be able to make for this floor before heading on to the upper levels of the ship!

As the entrance room, this will give you your very first view of this dungeon and what's to come. It has two levels, and you can only access the upper once you've made your way there through the floor:

Thankfully, Fred never caught on to the cold so he's been busy making a ton of animations for all the desert NPCs and other various odds and ends happening over there! Check these things out:

Vilya scaring Freddy and Teddy out of a slump?!

A sleeping carpenter lady...

...An archaeologist brushing through the sands...

...a dragon grabbing onto a planet (what in the world could this mean?!)...

...another archaeologist, studying a tablet of some sort...

...Ledge from the Collector's HQ, enjoying some music...

...with none other than Sally, also from the Collector's HQ!

Then we have a bunch of flavor animations, bringing the desert to life:

..and lastly, Vilya again, waiting impatiently for something (probably the release of the new patch):

Quite exciting, no?! The desert has more NPCs than the other most NPC-heavy area in the game Tai Ming, and I'm pretty sure it's the most animation-heavy area as well. We're quite happy with the way things look this far, so hopefully you guys will like it too!

And here's another portrait, that of an archaeologist. I think this is the final archaeologist for now - at least I hope we have enough by now (there's quite a few of them already, to be honest)!

This guy is inspired by none other than Howard Carter, who was the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb!

Alright, time to get back to work - and what better way to start than to make some new portraits?! Here's an autumn fae who will be hanging out in the desert with her friends at the Saloon:

Hey guys! Sorry for the late post this week, we just got hit with a cold here at the Pixel Ferrets office, which means the rest of the week will probably be blog-free, unfortunately :( :(

HOWEVER, I do have a little something for you, and it's a sneak peek of the Ghost Ship!! Yes, I've started working on the backgrounds and what they could/will look like, and here's a first look, if you will - basically I edited some old stuff, made a bunch of new stuff, and mashed it all together into something that would fit an old abandoned ship kind of setting:

For live decorations, we're thinking tiny crabs, and some more scary stuff like shadows and stuff moving around! That will all fall on Fred though, and he's still quite busy doing desert stuff (I too have some stuff remaining, mainly portraits - but I couldn't help but start a little something on the ship since we'll soon be diving into that stuff)!

I'll probably start working on actual rooms and doing some more concept rooms once we feel a little better over here (I swear basically every single person I've met outside the office over the last week has been coughing or sneezing or actually told me they were sick recently so I guess it's just our turn now T__T)

I'll be back with new posts as soon as I can! In the meanwhile I hope you guys fare better, haha.

See you soon!!

Yes, the closer we draw to the patch, the more tiny fixes we make! Here's a bunch of them again, starting with adding more the rocks by this crossing, to make sure you as a player don't get frustrated when you can't walk over them (before it felt kind of ambiguous whether they were there to block your path or simply decorative):

Next, we decided to add a fancier door to the math caves rather than temporary spear blockades, giving the solving of a puzzle a slight more oomph as these will open:

We've added more decorations to the ruins as well. We wanted to give it the feel of having had a bunch of traps, many of which have already been sprung, and so we added the remnants of them:

Another portrait appears as well, this one of a caveling hanging out in the saloon:

...as well as some bonus expressions for one of the characters you'll be talking to:

Finally, I decided to adjust the puzzle block colors slightly! Below you see the old version, which we felt were a bit too dark to properly fit with the desert background:

And here's the new, which are much lighter and slightly more yellow, to make them blend in more:

Yes, there's a third portrait this week! So many characters in the desert!! Whew! This one is a carpenter, possibly the daughter of the carpenter in Evergrind City.

Unfortunately, she's fallen asleep on the job, forgetting to mend a broken bridge-- oh my.. Let's hope you can wake her up so you don't have to walk around the entire area to get where you wanna go!

We're drawing closer to the patch and there's still a lot of character portraits to be made, so here we have another! This girl is an archaeologist who works in the desert - perhaps she has a tool or some book that might help you on your way?

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