As for Fred, he's been busy potting a lot of plants! Here you can see a whole bunch of them in their housing forms, including a jumpkin for which I haven't made a proper pot yet:
Next we have another portrait, of another of the veteran collectors we're adding:
And today we're taking a look at the new interface where you'll be able to choose which of your seeds to plant! Going for a pretty minimalistic and streamlined design here, this interface will only show the seed, how much it costs to pot it, what sort of pot and plant it'll result in and how much money you have!
I made two versions of this interface, one with static colours which you can see above, and one where the colours are different for each seed, seen here below:
And here's the second batch:
On to the next mission, making drop appearances for each of the potted plants! First batch here:
Meanwhile in Fred's department, we see a sneak peek of a couple new things for the stable update: a couple shields, a sprout, and an idle animation for one of the veteran collectors:
Now that we've been back a while and gotten back into the groove of working, we thought it was high time to have a meeting about what we're gonna do the next bunch of weeks! As you know, the frontline patch has been released and we're currently working on stuff for the stable version of the same. As such we went over what things will be added, and had a few unexpected ones added to the list as well!
First up, as mentioned before, we'll add a book series by Penn Wrythe, that you'll find parts of throughout the game. The final part will only be written after you've answered a couple questions asked by the writer herself, meaning you'll determine the ending. We haven't yet started working on this, but it'll be done in one of the coming weeks.
We're also finally adding the final bunch of haircuts, giving you a bunch of new selections! We'll also make it possible to choose from the opposite gender's haircut pool.
A redesign of the enemy codex is gonna happen - to be honest, we'll probably redesign most of the menu, parts of which you've already seen, but for now the enemy codex redesign is the only one we're certain will make it into the stable update. Our aim here is making it look a bit more pleasing visually as well as adding a few more things, such as the plant enemy seeds! We haven't yet decided if the seeds are gonna function like a normal drop in the codex, or if there will be a plant icon somewhere indicating that this is an enemy type that drops seeds. Both these options come with their own pros and cons, and as of yet we haven't really made any final decision on how to handle it - but it'll get ironed out in a meeting at a later date.
Other than these things we still have the other things mentioned previously such as the seed system and the basement beneath the church in Port Monnaie, most of which has already been finished!
Now, on to more work, got a lot left to do this week :D
And now, back to doing something I haven't done in a little while, which is a new portrait! This is for one of the new older generation collectors you'll find in the HQ at some point:
Next up, time to make some more potted plants! Without further ado:
Now, time to get back to work and what better way to start off a new work week after a week's holiday than to make the first pieces of a whole new system? These seeds (appropriately enough, since it's spring time over here and I just spent pretty much the entire vacation outside managing the garden) will drop from all the greenery inspired enemies in the game, letting you plant them in your own home! Let's take a look:
I've also made all the preparations for the first such plant, namely the Power Flower, whose seed you can already get after defeating it in Story Mode:
(Sorry for pinging you guys with a rather empty post, but I thought I'd just let you know, in case any of you wondered why there hasn't been any new updates this week, we'll be taking a week off from work since we didn't get any time off during easter in anticipation of this patch! I could have sworn I mentioned it when I wrote the last post, but we only decided on taking this time off very close to when we patched so I must have forgotten to add it in!
Anyways, the blog will be back as usual on the 19th! Sorry again for not letting you know sooner, thanks for understanding :3)
And today's patch time! Now go forth dear friends and try out the new patch over on the frontline beta! Among the new stuff is:
* Three big but optional side "quests"/objectives has been added, you can find them in the lost ship, Pillar Mountains and Mt Bloom respectively
* You can now refight all bosses in the arena, which has been improved in terms of UI and has a few more challenges as well
* A new load screen and splash screen for everyone who has been working on the game; the game should also load more quickly
* More bosses have drops (if you've killed them already you have been awarded the drops retroactively as all boss drops are now at 100%)
* Talent orbs can now be transformed into silver skill points and the other way around in the HQ
You can read the full patch notes over at the forums! And as always, all feedback is appreciated, please continue to help us make this game the best it can be, we value each and every one of your comments <3
Doing things a little different today, since tomorrow will be patching day! So here's a little early sneak peek of three new collectors that will appear in the collector's HQ or around the world, featuring a few more veterans, since we felt like the collectors all seemed awfully young:
Since we decided to make a bunch of new boss drops as well, I better get to work making those! Here's a Power Flower seed, an Evil Eye Mask, and a Thorn Worm cap:
I also went ahead and made the drop appearance of the power flower seed all grown up for its place in the housing system, although you won't be able to use it just yet (next update, maybe!)
Finally I was a bit cheeky and made my own suggestion for what the Toy Factory's shield drop could look like, although it'll most likely be edited and adjusted a bit by Fred:
Now, time for some last minute additions, starting with the final arena award, the arena hat:
And as an additional bonus, a sneak peek of what Maracus Skill-to-Talent transmute looks like, complete with the awesome song made by our amazing music creator Andrew Riley of Lucky Lion Studios! Look at the old man go :3
Now that the month has drawn to a close, it's time to do a quick recap of what's left for this patch, especially what we want to add to frontline and what we'll save for stable - so it was high time for another meeting!
One of the things we've been talking about has been the boss drops. Right now only a few early bosses have boss drops, which aren't even dropped 100% of the time, which is a bit weird even now that we've added boss rebattles in the arena. We had two options for this - either remove the boss drops altogether or let the boss drops be at 100% and add some more to other bosses across the game. In this case, we decided to go with the later, adding a bunch of new boss drops, including a seed allowing you to grow a Power Flower inside your house, an evil eye mask dropped from the evil eye in the ghost ship, a thorn worm cap allowing you to wear thorns on your head, and a cog shield dropped from the toy machine in Seasonne!
The Power Flower Seed brings us to the next topic, which is a plant system where you can plant seeds and have them grow in your home! How this will work is that you'll find a seed, dropped from various plant enemies, and if you take the seed to the tree in Seasonne he'll put it in a pot for you, which you can then place in your house. After some time, the seed will turn into a full grown potted version of the enemy you got the seed from. We're not sure if this entire system will be added to the game with this frontline update, but we'll start it up at the very least.
For the stable update, we'll be adding Penn Wrythe's novels, which will appear throughout the game in parts. After meeting her in Port Monnaie you'll get to influence the way the final part of the story turns out, so think about your answers carefully! We'll also be adding the cellar beneath the church in Port Monnaie, as well as a bunch of old books here and there across the game.
We discussed whether to add the player scaling feature yet or not, but we've decided to save that for another update - possibly the one after this one, where we go back to focusing more on Arcade Mode again.
Meanwhile, Fred is working on adding and animating some new NPCs, namely the priest and apprentice that will appear in the church in Port Monnaie, as well as giving Bokus the ability to read and turn the pages of his book:
Now, some of these things are a bit placeholder-y, one of them being the fonts and overall design of the texts used. For example, I'm not too fond of the readability in the sound design teams part of the load screen, with it being on two rows and a bit hard to read overall:
So I made a couple suggestions making it look a bit more streamlined and less in your face:
For the cloudy load screen part, there was a bit of a font issue as well. Here's what it looked like before:
And here are some suggested improvements, with this first one being my personal favourite (although we haven't made any final decisions regarding which one we'll pick yet):
Finally, with this new load screen appearing, I felt like the old in-game load screen between areas look a bit lame (it was one of the very first things we added to the game, after all!) so I made a little mockup of what a new version could look like, tying back to the pre-game load screen we're implementing right now:
The text on the left will be replaced by the usual gameplay tips, I just didn't have them on hand so I picked a random rat fact for now! The idea is that the clouds will be floating slowly across the sky, with possibly the occasional bird flying across - although hopefully the game won't load for so long between areas that you'll have to spend any longer amounts of time looking at it haha!
