....Aaaand it's high time for another Mixed Bag!
First up, smoothing out the cave wall edges to create water edges:
Next, as we implemented more and more of the Tai Ming 2nd zone backgrounds, we came to realize we wanted to change some things around. One of those things were the placement of the cave entrance seen below:
Since this cave will be a puzzle cave, we thought it'd be a little bit funny if it was next to the graveyard, in order [.....]
Time for another guest post by Teddy, this time on the Housing system! :D
A long time ago, I was working on the Housing systems to keep myself occupied while waiting for some new graphic assets from Vilya and Fred. After a few days I got the graphics I was waiting for, and I left Housing behind to continue working on the story. Now I find myself in a similar situation as back then, and so I decided to go back to tinkering on the Housing systems! [.....]
The portrait creation continues! This fellow here is the key to a very old mystery: why do the guards in Tai Ming all look alike? The answer is simple - they're all brothers! And their father is non other than this scientist, who currently works in the monkey lab:
When making this portrait I used the guard portrait as a base and recolored and repainted where needed, to make them look similar enough to be related.
Now, whether there's a similar explanation to why [.....]
Over the last year since we launched Early Access on steam, we've received a bunch of recurring questions about the game and it's development. As such, it's long overdue that we update our FAQ on the website, and so, I've gathered a bunch of the questions we get a lot and tried to answer them to the best of my ability:
Why should I buy into Early Access? If you're asking this question, the correct answer is that you probably shouldn't.
Buying into EA is mainly recommended for people who wish to be a part of the development: helping us finding bugs, coming up with suggestions or are curious to see how a game develops over [.....]
Note: This will be the last blog post until next week. Yes, I'm actually gonna take a couple days off! CRAZY right? I actually haven't had a single day off this year, unless you count the time we spent taking care of our cat Link when he went back and forth between our home and the animal hospital earlier this year (not exactly a relaxing time).
So, I'm gonna take a few days to try and enjoy what's left of summer and try to recharge these batteries! [.....]
Over the course of the development of Secrets of Grindea, which has gone on for five (5!) years now, we've had many different ways of keeping track of decisions made in the past and where to head in the future.
Unfortunately they've varied in usefulness - turns out, simply talking about something in the group and then expecting everyone to remember the outcome of that conversation doesn't work quite that well. In fact, more than once we've had the exact same conversation several times, with different outcomes, [.....]
As I (probably) mentioned before, the giant Thorn-Worm boss fight will take place outside the HQ! But as you can see below, this place is already filled with training dummies and boxes! Things that will most definitely disrupt your fight in an annoying way:
So, in order to solve this, while still keeping the fight area somewhat decorated, I made a version of the area where the giant Thorn-Worm's you'll battle have trashed the area, leaving the dummies and boxes in ruins. The progress of doing [.....]
Moving on to the present version, this building is pretty much the same - only less clean. And the carpets broke, as it seems they tend to do?!
Present Version
While Tessen's house resembled her old home in Tai Ming's first zone, this building is supposed to hint back at the left house next to the exit of that same zone. Like this place, it was a place of administration, only difference is this building deals with the actual villagers of Tai Ming, while the one [.....]
Next on our interior list, we have the government/administration building (we just keep calling it random things), where your goal is to get a citizenship-emblem in order to progress the story. Since you're not from Tai Ming, and have only spent a very short while in this town, this might prove harder to get than you'd first hope.
After all, with a several year long wait list to even visit the city, getting citizenship here must be quite hard indeed. But I guess, if you could [.....]
Remember I talked about the puzzle cave design a while back? The prototyping has officially begun, and here is our very first in house testing of two of the puzzles!
The first one is the phase shift challenge, where you'll phase through time to reach your goal. For this puzzle, you have to move mirror blocks around both in the past and the present in order to reach your goal. When we make the correct graphics for this, we'll have to make some kind of indicator for [.....]
In game development, sometimes you encounter things that are so annoying to implement that you need to vent on someone else’s blog. This is one of those times.
Task: make a short transition between low water and high water, to be played when you close or open the dam in Tai Ming. Easy enough, right? Well, yes, but sometimes it’s the easy things that end up melting your mind!
Here are the assets involved (excluding the background) in creating the transition above:
[.....]
And now, another mixed bag. This one is focused on the Inn I made, which I felt lacked a few decorations, both in the past and present states!
First, I add a slight shadow below the wall
Then, additional flower decorations!
Moving the flowers over to the present
Some cracks in the walls
Vines growing from inside the walls
Some glass lying around
The new past version (still no NPCs T_T)
...and the new present version! [.....]
And it's time for another portrait, of another collector! Since Tai Ming has a Collector's HQ, it's only logical that there are a few collectors running around doing collector-y stuff.
Where exactly this guy will appear and what he'll do hasn't been decided yet, but it's likely he'll be near the Collector's HQ in map 2 :)
[.....]
Time to move on to the next house! This one belongs to Tessen, the young girl you met in the first map of Tai Ming. She has now grown up to be a young lady, living in her own house in the second zone.
When making this map, I wanted it to resemble her grandfather's home in the first zone, so before making the sketch I knew I wanted to bring some of those items along here, to give the player a sense of recognition (hopefully).
[.....]
I think it's time to throw in another portrait! Looks like we're gonna keep it around one-two per week :)
This guy is another one of those "silly" portraits, featuring the villager in charge of Tai Ming's dam. You kind of need to get access to the dam mechanics, allowing you to lower or raise the water levels, but unfortunately this guy won't let you waltz around doing that as you wish!
At least not until you've completed a quest for him... ;)
Work in [.....]
Next up, turning the storage room into it's present self! Abandoned and ruined - you know the drill by now!
The Storage Room in the Past
Progress GIF
The Storage Room in the Present!
[.....]
Moving below stairs, it's time to take a look at the inn's storage room! Here the innkeeper stores whatever things he does not need, and it also houses something you need to interact with in order to progress the story...!
Can you guess what? :)
Progress GIF
The Finished Room
[.....]
Today I bring to you our first prototype of the giant Thorn-Worm boss!
Of course, the graphics are mostly WIP, and the boss fight won't take place here (we just used this area for testing purposes), but the encounter itself is fully playable and just in need of some minor tweaks:
Remember, this is just the first step of the encounter. Once you've done some damage to this guy, you'll end up with two of these on the playfield! Oh dear.. [.....]
Cheers!
