Vilya's Workblog

The second to last card! This time a Solem, making a little sand castle in the dunes. Such a peaceful sight! Maybe he's just angry you're stepping all over the sand he uses for his castles?

WIP video:

Out of nowhere, a new NPC for the desert appears! A long time ago, Fred secretly made an animation for a Merchant Isle NPC working in the docks, and now that I found it it's of course time to make a portrait for him!

Since this NPC already has a sprite, he will likely appear in the stable patch when it goes live; I'm ncertain whether the priest and acolyte will make it since they haven't gotten any Fred-made sprites yet. I guess we'll see! :)

Let's start this new week with some friendly faces! As memory orb progress is coming along, it's time for a whole bunch of expressions for the main trio featured in one or a few of them, who so far only have one portrait expression.

First up, Charlotte, aka 'mom', who has expressions in three different skin tones depending on how you designed your character (her hair color will be changed by putting another sprite with just the hair on top of this one):

Next, we have Dad, for whom I made a couple of expressions I'm not even sure will be used, but it's kind of hard to stop once you're in the flow of making weird faces:

And finally, Ivy, who is somewhat more reserved and doesn't have as many expressions as the others:

Meanwhile, after having made a ton of NPCs for the desert, it's finally time for Fred to start working on the Ghost Ship enemies!!

The first enemy he's making is a skeleton ghost, which will come in two version: one that wields a sword, and one that uses magic to buff and debuff the surrounding players and enemies! As usual, he's made a lot of sketches featuring different versions of the enemy below (starting with the sword-wielding one), with the one in the green circle representing the one he's decided to work with for the first couple of animations.

The magic user version will likely have a different color scarf and a slightly changed hat:

Exciting times! Can't wait to start prototyping and testing these guys out, it's gonna be so nice to move on to a different area after so many months working on the desert! As always, it's great to be an indie dev cause as soon as you get tired of one thing, everything changes and you need to start working on something else!

And now, what I believe to be the last in a series of the younger version portraits: Ivy, from a time before she became the leader for the Collectors!

Who is this mysterious person, and what was her relationship with Dad and Charlotte like in the past? All questions that may soon be answered through those memory orbs...

Next up, another card... There are still a few left, after all! This is the Orange Slime card, featuring an orange slime used as a saw by the desert's own carpenter, Mallet:

Next, another portrait from past times: this time featuring young dad!!

At this time in his life, he recently got accepted as a Collector after passing the trials, along with Charlotte (your mom) and Ivy, who went on to become the grandmaster of the Collectors.

Once again, thanks for all the feedback surrounding the desert patch! Now it's a new week with new adventures, and for now we'll focus more on upcoming stuff!

So while the actual room-by-room design of the upper floors of the ghost ship haven't been decided, we know what types of rooms we want, and one such room is the cabin. Or cabins, really. We'd like the player to battle their way through a set of cabins on the second or third floor, so naturally we need to make a bunch of items that can be seen in these cabins. As such, I made a random design of what one such room could look like, and made a bunch of random props to put in it.

I know I mentioned we'd continue on adding things for the desert's stable release, but I'll have plenty of time to do that while throwing in a ghost ship background or two... :)

Let's take a look:

Now that the patch has been out on Frontline for a while, we set our eyes on the next target: getting it ready for stable! Aside from the bug fixes and some of your suggested improvements (as always, we're very thankful for the feedback), there are a few things we'd like to add before feeling completely satisfied with the desert for now. There are two reasons for this, one being the obvious 'of course the area will be better with more quests', but the other is that it gives Fred (and to some extent, me) some time to get ahead with the Ghost Ship before we start prototyping that place for real.

You see, in order to get a good idea for what the Ghost Ship will entail design wise, we need to get some enemy prototypes up and running, and the best way of doing that is to have Fred make a bunch of animated sketches we can use against my placeholder backgrounds. This will help us get a feel for the dungeon and to make sure our enemy combinations work as intended.

Therefore, the things we'll add to the desert for stable mainly involves Teddy programming stuff, and me throwing together some minor graphics such as more item sprites for rewards and such. Once we're done with that, Fred should have made enough enemy sketches that Teddy can begin prototyping their behavior, and I can continue making backgrounds while he does that.

So, before the desert is released on stable, we intend to add the following:

Another (optional) challenge in the math cave.
A side quest involving a cat of Port Monnaie...
A side quest solving the troubles of the depressed drunkard in the Saloon (which also involves elite versions of the desert enemies, which haven't been added thus far)!
A questline with the photographer Cammy, who is working in Port Monnaie, using the mechanics from Arcadia where you take photographs of various places or things in the game.
Each shop in the marketplace, with new items to buy (lots of housing items)!
A bunch of memory orbs to show a few past events (I've already started working on that, as you have seen)...

and, finally:
More treasure maps, which will be given to you by Finder the Archaeologist, who wants your help in retrieving some ancient treasures.

Like the other areas, more stuff will be added before release, but we think this is a good way to start. It's also possible we'll add a bunch of those season orbs across the world, which will help you reach a few of those chests that have been taunting you... We'll see!

As mentioned a long while ago, we will add a bunch of flashback crystals/memory orbs where you'll get to see certain events from the past. A few of these will include Charlotte, the player character's mother, and because these events happen quite a few years ago, I got to make a younger version of her, which was super fun!

As with the grown up portrait in the game, this one will also change hair- and skincolor based on how you designed your own character :)

Since the first version had quite a long neck, I decided to shorten it slightly in the finished version: the old one is shown first below, with the final version shown last:

There are still some cards to make, so here we have the Cacute card! Quite simple in its design, it features a Cacute relaxing in the sun with a drink. Remember to drink a lot when it's hot outside (I recommend water, though)!

Finally the patch is up and running!

After months of hard work, this update includes the desert Dragonbone Dunes and desert town Port Monnaie in all its glory, with a ton of new NPCs (the most NPC heavy area yet!), the continuation of the main quest, a bunch of side quests and a couple of boss battles!

As you might guess, there's a lot of things that can go wrong when adding this amount of stuff at once, so be prepared to do some bug hunting and let us hear about all the wonky and broken things! As always, all feedback is highly encouraged and much appreciated, so let us hear what you think when you've finished this installment. You can leave a comment here, on our forums, or make a topic over at the Steam forums!

Most of all, we hope you enjoy this update!! Teddy will be monitoring bug reports closely during the coming week(s), while Fred and I continue working on the ghost ship, where the adventure will take you next.... :)

Hey guys! Did you have a nice weekend? It's Monday, still no patch, but we hope it will be ready tomorrow (fingers crossed)! Teddy's ironing out the last couple of bugs and adding a few items to chests, so it is coming!

In the meanwhile, work continues as usual for me, with the portrait of another character that will appear in Port Monnaie but won't make it into the patch: an boy, who will help the priest out in the church! His outfit, like the priest's, is inspired by real life priest robes.

It's Friday, and a couple weeks ago I estimated that by now the patch would arrive! However, as you've certainly noticed, no patch has been uploaded yet - so what has happened? Well the short version is that we wanted to make things more interesting (don't we always), so the added work has pushed the patch forward by a couple of days.

In other words, we hope to release the patch in the beginning of next week, instead! Serves me right for making estimates, they just never end up being correct...

Anyway, in the meanwhile, have some sneak peeks of what you'll see in the upcoming patch, starting with a couple of animations for the desert carpenter:

There's also a couple new items, two of which are shown below:

Due to something you may or may not do, there will be changes in the desert map:

A new type of halloweed?!

Aaand a ton of new expressions for people you'll interact with:

Stay tuned, and let's hope my next estimate of the patch releasing next week will actually be right this time!!

I'm working on the cards as well, and while they may not be included in the patch, they should be added shortly after! Here's a video featuring the creation of the Sand Raven card, where one such annoying bird is preparing a meal:

As usual, you can't have a boss battle (even if it's a side battle not related to the main story) without a boss portrait. This portrait will be slightly different as it's the first one that has a sprite in front of the textbox! We thought the tomato would look cute in front of it, rather than have all his vegetables hidden behind the box.

WIP and finished version below:

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