And here we have two more room sizes, also ready to be mixed and matched! Looking forward to battling your way through these floors yet? :D
Today we've had a lot of interesting Arcade Mode discussions (more on that later), and we've also started working on getting those Ghost Ship floors into Arcade Mode rooms!
There will be four room sizes, and each of them will have 4x4 types of decorations. What that means is that there's four different options for each corner in the room, much like in previous Arcade Floor designs. So essentially, the top left part (the left side of the wall) of each room can be 1 out of 4 options and combines with any of the 4 decoration options for the other parts of each room. Mix and matching this way will make the rooms more different from one another, and will hopefully reduce the repetitive feeling of going through the rooms.
Below is a bunch of options for the decorations combined together, with the top left picture being the room without any of the decorations at all. As always, each room won't have doors in every direction; but I've kept them around now for clarity:
Today we've had another long meeting day, planning in what order to finish the remaining content. We had a discussion whether to finish up Arcade Mode before Story Mode, or to try to finish up as much as possible of it without giving it it's proper ending until all of the story mode content has been added. For now, we're aiming for the latter, with our next big priority after finishing everything related to Stable being the final boss designs.
There are four unique bosses left to make, three for Story Mode and one for Arcade Mode (that will be Arcade Mode unique). There's also another, fourth 'special' boss for Story Mode that will draw on powers you've seen before during your journeys (basically it's main power will be summoning previous bosses)!)
The reason why we want to focus on this once Fred has finished up things for the final cutscene of this update is that bosses usually take a very long time to get right, both in terms of design and then to finish up all the animations as well. By starting our design work on the bosses as soon as possible, it will give us a lot of time to fix any issues that might appear, and gives Teddy and Fred a chance to struggle with that while I work on backgrounds for the final dungeon!
Speaking of the final dungeon, we still need to get going with finalizing the design for it. We're still aiming to have all or at least most areas and dungeons represented in rooms and challenges of their own, but we haven't yet decided exactly how long to make each floor. We don't want it to end up being too long; but long enough to provide an interesting and exciting experience.
Meanwhile, we've also received a massive sound batch, so we're now in the process of choosing the sound effects from the options given us and implementing those! Exciting times indeed; we think you'll be very happy with the sounds overall - we know we are! :)
There are four unique bosses left to make, three for Story Mode and one for Arcade Mode (that will be Arcade Mode unique). There's also another, fourth 'special' boss for Story Mode that will draw on powers you've seen before during your journeys (basically it's main power will be summoning previous bosses)!)
The reason why we want to focus on this once Fred has finished up things for the final cutscene of this update is that bosses usually take a very long time to get right, both in terms of design and then to finish up all the animations as well. By starting our design work on the bosses as soon as possible, it will give us a lot of time to fix any issues that might appear, and gives Teddy and Fred a chance to struggle with that while I work on backgrounds for the final dungeon!
Speaking of the final dungeon, we still need to get going with finalizing the design for it. We're still aiming to have all or at least most areas and dungeons represented in rooms and challenges of their own, but we haven't yet decided exactly how long to make each floor. We don't want it to end up being too long; but long enough to provide an interesting and exciting experience.
Meanwhile, we've also received a massive sound batch, so we're now in the process of choosing the sound effects from the options given us and implementing those! Exciting times indeed; we think you'll be very happy with the sounds overall - we know we are! :)
And now that the last of the Ghost Ship stuff is finalized, it's time to go back to doing improvements for the older areas! And this time, we'll take a look at the southern entrance to Evergrind City:
With the library finally added to the game, it's been time for us to think about the books one might find in the game, and how we'd like to present them. One such option is displaying books as actual books, and I decided to experiment a little with such a presentation.
Here's the outside:
...and the inside of a book, with some sample text:
Our dream is that a transition between the pages will be animated as well, so it'll give you a feel of turning the pages of the book. While we haven't confirmed how viable this look will be in the end (it might take a lot of work to fit the texts we have in mind into these book templates) this is what we're aiming for right now! My dream is that small notes and such will be displayed on boxes that have the shape of paper scraps as well, rather than the usual brown box. But we'll see!
So, yesterday we updated Frontline and it's finally time for you to try out a bunch of the additional content surrounding the ghost ship and good old Tai Ming! If you haven't done so yet, go try it all out and let us know what you think :)
In the coming month we hope to have added the last bits needed as well as all of the sound effect and getting it all up and running on stable as well.
In the meanwhile, have a look at some of the stuff you now get to see in this update:
Drawing ever closer to finishing up the patch, there are still a bunch of expressions needed for our new ghost friends! Here's another batch of them:
Next up, another ghost! This painter has been painting for a thousand years (and counting). Poor guy!
In this next step we're adding a bit of detail to the phase shift course, creating a new block for it, and a shop title for the creepy ghost ship shop!
As you may have guessed from the new Flying Fortress building and what I wrote before, there will be another phase shift challenge coming up! This one can give you a total of three different rewards, each one more challenging to get than the next. And naturally, it needs a background as well:
Brandy will play a pretty big part in a quest/secret as well, are you looking forward to seeing him again?
This old priest makes an appearance as well, drawn back to the haunting village of Tai Ming after his death:
Next up, another character that will return in a ghostly form! Remember this collector from Tai Ming? She'll return and feature a little side quest/secret of her own:
But first, something about a long awaited addition! We know a lot of you have been asking for an easy way to change the controls, whether you use a keyboard or a controller. We've already implemented the mechanics for changing the controls on a keyboard, and while we want to add the feature for the controller as well, for now it'll remain a WIP.
However, if you do have a controller plugged in, you'll soon be able to see what each of the buttons do, with the help of this new graphic:
Without further ado:
To make it a bit more readable, we decided to move the second set of buttons behind the first ones, since that's how it looks on most controllers - even if this makes the design of the controller graphics itself look a bit less nice. Also added the spaces where the function of each of the buttons will be described:
This week we'll start with a bonus building added to the flying fortress! This building will replace the island on the right part of the fortress and will, though a quest unlocked after the ghost ship, give you an opportunity to do some more phase shifting (yay)!
Later on I'll show you what the progress of creating the insides looks like... :)
And the second portrait features Mirar, a sad NPC in Evergrind City who has a hard time keeping himself optimistic about things:
Two new portraits are needed for this patch as well, and the first features a headless skeleton, with and without an added head:
Now, with the ghost ship quest coming together, it's time to make a bunch of expressions for the ghosts you'll meet (and hopefully help!) there:
Quite a bunch of friendly faces! Will you manage to figure out how to help them all?
And now it's time for a whole on of drop appearance sprites for all of those housing items I made last week! To showcase these, here's a video featuring the making of them:
Let's start off the week with a mixed bag of random fixes and additions! First up, adding the door to Pine's office into the Flying Fortress:
Second, changing the ghost fae from winter to spring:
Third, breaking the mirror in the singer's cabin:
Next up, making some improvements and additions to the library which is finally getting put into the game:
And finally, adding some moss to the fallen mast in the battle area on top of the ship:
