Vilya's Workblog

Now, one thing we've decided to do for our translators is to provide each of the shop title backgrounds without the text, so any translator can make their own names for the shops. As such, I spend some time removing said texts and making a bunch of PSD files for them:

(Ignore the Egg Shop one in the middle, accidentally added the text version of that!)

I've seen some of you have already started playing around with these backgrounds and I gotta say it's really fun to see! :) If any of you are working on translations, this feature should be up and running right now. If you decide to use it, please feel free to share your work on any of our communities (such as our Discord server) so we can see! :D

In Fred's (and Teddy's) department, we're playing around with some light effects for that Grindea sprite! Below you can see some tests, as well as a palette swap - it won't be used the way it looks there, but it shows how we pretty easily can swap her colours around if we need to during the fight, for effect purposes :)

Now it's time to upgrade another interface! Let's take a look at the good old quest part of the journal and see how we can improve it:

With this new setup, active and completed quests only need one menu, and whether a quest is active or finished will depend on whether they're gold or silver colored, just like in the Trophy section! I also upgraded each of the quest indicator images while I was at it. What do you guys think? :)

We're also adding a different way of showing the maps, namely a pop out function which shows you the map on a piece of paper! This is what it'll look like:

Give it more of a map-y feel, doesn't it? :)

Next, we'll be upgrading the look of the map interface, seeing as we've been adding a bunch of new maps recently! Let's take a look:

This is a bit more streamlined, and allows you to see more maps on each page!

Over on the very small super early betas, the next update is already up and running now, featuring the new books! One thing we decided to add is proper book fronts, which look something like this:

Sample of the actual text in the game:

And here we have some of the text with some of the color variations:

We'll be adding more book covers as well! By the time the game is finished, I would like to have more variations, but for now the main difference will be the color:

Meanwhile, Fred has been doing some more work on Grindea! Here's some of his WIP sketches:

...And Teddy's been adding my personal favourite feature in a long time! Lizards in your house!! How cute isn't this?

And here we have another option, the icons in colour! Which one do you prefer?

I personally feel a bit torn, since the monochrome one looks a bit less messy and more stylish, but it's also nice to bring in more colour to the menu! It's possible we'll keep on iterating these options, or go for a mix of some sort, perhaps having the category you're currently on show in colour. We'll see!

Remember how started improving the inventory menu a while back, preparing for the categories to be icons rather than text? Well, it's finally time to start making those icons!

In this first test, I went for a monochrome look, but we're not sure whether it's the best way to go - perhaps it's better to bring in a bit more colour to the menu, giving each icon a colour of its own. What do you guys think?

And now, something that's been a long time coming: new haircuts! Remember the locked ones? Well they won't be locked much longer, as we intend to fill up the remaining haircut slots - or at least add a bunch more of them. Here's the first batch:

Next up, it's time for a mixed bag! First, editing that enemy info page a bit, allowing for larger numbers in each of the categories:

Another seed is on the way, through which you can grow a very strange plant indeed... Let's take a look:

After some consideration of the previous version, we decided to swap it around:

And now, for the seed:

And all of the usual interface bits needed for you to grow this thing:

Meanwhile in Freds' department, work on Grindea is in full swing! Take a look at these sketches:

Next up, a quick redesign of the enemy info pages! Just some slight graphic updates and the removal of some unnecessary text in favour of icons!

And here's a quick little reminder of what it currently looks like in the game, which will be replaced with the above version:

With the various books being added to the game, I thought it's high time to make a better background than the typical classic brown one for such works. As you might remember, we designed a book interface ages ago, but due to limits in sizing and making it easier for us overall, we decided to scrap that some time back (for the time being, anyway). However, a more simple paper would still be feasible to add, so I threw something together:

Work on a very different part on the game is progressing as well, namely that story written by Penn Wrythe!

The idea is that you'll find parts of this story across the game, each one progressing the story slightly, until you meet Penn Wrythe herself and help her come up with the ending to her novel. The idea is that that Penn Wrythe will ask you what you value the most; power, love or fame (or some such), and depending on your answer the final part of the story will turn out in different ways.

There will be 5-8 parts of this story scattered across the game, so it's quite the long tale.

Moving on with the codex work, we've actually started second guessing that fancy new design, as it limits us in some ways. True, you could show more enemies on one page, but on the other hand there was no easy or obvious way to browse which items each enemy drops. As such, I'm making another iteration, this one based on the original, only with fancier graphics and cleaning it up a bit:

Meanwhile, Fred's been working on some fun stuff, including a little cloud that will water those growing plats for you, and Grindeas idle animation! How cool is that?

And here we have a couple more iterations of the codex, these ones with fewer details for more readability, and some bigger spacing:

Which one is your favourite this far?

About

Label Cloud

Blog Archive