Finally, let's end this week by taking a look at what Fred has kept himself busy with: the Solem animations! In order of appearance: Appear (spawn), attack, dig (for when he charges at you), grab (as he appears from beneath your feet to hit you), and a regular movement animation!
Important to notes is that these are still in the 'sketch' stage, so they need some cleaning up (as you can see on a few, there are holes in the [.....]
And now, back to the Arcadia rework once more. There, it's time to introduce Remedi's Alchemy, an important part of your future arcade runs...
[.....]
Now, time for another portrait: the summer fae luring her winter fae friend to the desert town!
[.....]
Now, time to take a look at the support skills mentioned in yesterday's post! Keep in mind, all of the names are working names for now and the effects might differ slightly from the descriptions below, depending on how things work out in the prototyping stage.
First up, the offensive ones:
Challenge - A taunt of sorts, where you make one enemy focus his whole attention on you. This means that if the enemy is currently attacking someone else (in multiplayer for instance), it will immediately target you instead. Under this effect, you'll deal more damage against this enemy, but it will also deal more damage against you. So, a double edged sword, if you will.
[.....]
With Fred back in town we had a meeting, as mentioned last week, where we discussed two important things: the new housing patch feedback and something I know many have long awaited... the support skills!
When it comes to the housing build tools, there actually haven't been much feedback to speak about, which we take as a good thing: hopefully that means they weren't too confusing! There are still some things we'd like to polish, though - for instance, some kind of visual effect for the clear and delete functions (as the items/rooms disappear).
We also want you to be able to add more than one door to a room, and by doing so connecting it [.....]
In Fred's department, the desert enemies continue to take shape! This time around he has finished up the Mrs. Bird animations and moved on to the Solem~
[.....]
It's been a while since we made the first step in the progress of revamping Arcadia, but now it's time for another: Candy's brother Muffin makes an appearance, ready to give you treats that will make your arcade runs easier!
[.....]
This week I'm continuing work on Tai Ming's arcade mode stuff, and it begins with changing the initial size of the rooms:
[.....]
Last week me and Teddy had full focus on getting the house building tools up and running, and I'm happy to say the patch is ready and has been uploaded!! Finally you'll be able to be more creative with your house, adding new rooms and editing their shape or size in more detail.
The full patch notes can be seen here, and as always, we'd LOVE to hear your feedback on these new tools, anything that may be confusing with them, improvements to be made etc. Let us know! You can comment either here or in the thread above (or make a new suggestions post on the forums).
Last week, as mentioned, Fred was also gone [.....]
Fred's gone home for a little bit of summer vacation this week, so instead of some animations, let's take a look at the build tools and where they're at as of now!
First up, the add new (room) tool, seen above! The cost of the room will be shown in the middle, and you use the arrow keys to decide where to place the entrance.
Below, you can see the prototype for the resize tool, where you use arrows to first select which wall you [.....]
The build update draws closer to completion as we begin implementing the tools needed - and the corresponding menu! [.....]
Yesterday, you might have noticed a tiny surprise-patch! While we're working hard on getting the house reshaping tools up and ready, yesterday's patch was of the smaller kind, adding a couple of the item fixes mentioned previously and that skip-quest mechanic that allows you to skip quests you've already completed! For the full patch notes, check the post here~ [.....]
So, as we mentioned before, we've decided to give you the tools to increase the size of your house, as well as changing the overall shape of each room. Here you can see the progress of prototyping said system, starting with the ability to edit each room's walls:
[.....]
So, I'm sure you're all wondering what we've decided to do in regards to Housing. Keep it as it is, add a number of layouts or implement a system which lets you create your own rooms?
After considering all the feedback from you guys (thank you for your contributions all of you!), we've decided that we do want to further improve the housing system, and we'd rather do it now while it's fresh in our minds rather than sometime in the future.
Since we estimate the development time will be more or less the same between creating pre-designed layouts or having you guys make those layouts yourselves, we've also decided to go for the the later, [.....]
This week Fred's focus has been more enemy animations, as well as laying the groundwork graphically for those weapon stands that will feature any weapon of your choosing as a housing item!
[.....]
More fixes, this time focused on editing some of the sprites (or creating new ones), so they fit better inside their designated squares!
[.....]
So, we've kept track of your feedback since the housing launch last week, and two requests stood out above the rest: bookcases facing sideways and chairs facing upwards!
[.....]
Last week we spent three days at GGC, which meant a lot of our usual work was slowed down for a while. Nevertheless, we managed to get the housing patch up and running, so if you haven't tried that yet, go ahead and test it!
The initial feedback seems very positive, and I'm actually surprised to see how many of you seem to really enjoy building your houses! The interiors that have been posted all look great and so creative, I didn't even know you could make such cool layouts with the things we made so far. Thank you for that all of you!
Now we have a lot of interesting decisions to make in regards [.....]
This week, Freds main focus has been getting all those housing icon moving. Here are the finished icons he worked on:
We didn't talk about the hand tool much in the previous post on housing, but the hand tool is a very basic tool accessible from the housing menu that allows you to move around your house and select any furniture piece you want (which in turn brings you into the other tools). The hand tool is also connected to your skin color in-game, [.....]
Sooo! GGC is over, and it was a blast. It seems every year the quality of the games keep increasing, and there are always a couple of games that totally manage to blow me away!
For those of you wanting a glimpse of all the game presented at the conference, check out this video:
One of the showfloor favorites, and clear winner of many of the awards at the award ceremony was this little gem called Pump the Frog, made by a bunch of first year students:
Totally charming and so well polished. It was hard to imagine they only had 8 weeks from start to finish, incredibly impressive work! It's also nominated [.....]
Cheers!
