Next up in the improvement spree: the school! This place needed a bit more detail (what sort of school is this where every single desk is empty?) and some fresh new furniture! Take a look:
While my main task today has been something completely unrelated to this which I'll show later, I also managed to squeeze in a quick upgrade of Evergrind West's area, which got a ton or more greenery! While I didn't make any new unique props for this upgrade so far, I still think the difference between the original version and the improved one is pretty massive! The old one looks pretty bare and unfinished in comparison, in my opinion anyway:
Because I've been doing a lot of work in Evergrind already, I thought it might be refeshing to take a break from it all and go to a place a bit further south! Time to make some improvements to Robin's house:
With that batch out of the way, what's next? Another one, of course! Slowly finishing up Evergrind itself, it's time to start looking at the places surrounding it, such as Evergrind South and West!
When it comes to the farmer's shop itself, we'll do what we'll do for the Arena reception room and the Dojo in Evergrind - swap it out for its arcade version:
The final building to improve in on this batch is the Blacksmith's, which has been in dire need of some graphics updates for quite a while! Without further ado:
Fred, meanwhile, has been working on some new animations for Captain Bones, where he seems awfully... Distraught? Whatever could be happening to him?
We also started making a test for the weather effect we'd like for the battle with Luke, adding some rain to give the battle a more epic feel (plus we haven't really had any weather effects before, so about time!):
And now, the garden and its surrounding area! Here I wanted to add some more flowers, update the fountain graphics and the fence behind the alchemist's house, as well as some details. The benches have also been updated as well to fit the more clean style of the later parts of the game:
Next, the hat shop! This place needs a bit more color, some updated graphics and just some more details. I might go back and change some of the colours of this house further on so it's colour scheme isn't as close to the cafes, but we'll see!
So, first up in this new batch of improvements we have the waiting room in the arena! To start with, this room felt a bit too big and empty, so we're making it smaller and more compact, adding more benches for people to sit at and some things added to the walls for their reading pleasure as they eagerly await the next match. Other than that, the graphics have been touched up overall, so the room feels as fresh as the newer parts of the game:
Next up, some more Evergrind Improvement plans! Another batch of these things, mainly wanting to upgrade the overall graphics for each of these areas but also add some stuff and spice things up:
Meanwhile, these two buildings will be fully replaced by their Arcadia versions, which were made much later on and feature much better art:
Didn't take too long, it's already time to look back on the ghost ship a little bit! Some minor changes and addition have been added here and there, starting with making the globe resemble the world map a slight bit more:
As well as settling for a zone name, which we decided would be The Lost Ship:
Also been working on a few upgrades to the Luke portrait, featuring a shirt that now more closely resemble his sprite, some anatomy fixes and a bit thicker outline here and there!
The café looks rather drab and boring as well, so it's time to spice it up a bit! More colors, better rendered props, a touch of mint (the color), and some new things on the walls:
Time for the alchemist's shop to get a bit of an upgrade as well! I decided to keep the worn out look of some of the props here, to make the house feel a bit old and worn out. Also added a bunch of more things to make the place seem a bit more cluttered, and some bonus carpets and vines for a touch of color:
And now, the area surrounding the smithy! This time I'll be focusing on the space around the smithy building, saving the laundry and adding some decorations to the café upper floor later on:
Next up, the plushie collector's house! I'm adding a couple more plushies, but the rest I think we'll add as they get added into the game: so whatever plushies you give her will appear in the house after you've handed them over. In other words, I'll return to this house later on, once all of the plushies have been made :)
And here we have a closer look at a bunch of those fancy Luke animations:
Exciting times!
Time for another look at Luke's boss battle! It's coming together quickly now, with a bunch of his attacks being mixed and match to create an interesting pattern for the first stages of his fight that will be unique every time:
Some of the effect graphics have been improved since the last time as well, and I feel like it already looks pretty good (with the exception of the placeholder background, hehe - I'll get to that eventually)!
What we want now is to amp up the second part of the fight. We already know he will enter berserk mode at a certain point, but aside from that we want to mix it up a bit so it's not just the same (random) mix and match combo patterns for the entirety of the fight. We have a couple of ideas for 'bigger' attacks that we'll try out in the near future though, so we'll see how that ends up!
