Alright, so there was one thing remaining to do in the desert ruins, and as most of the things have been implemented by now, it's time to get going with these puzzle blocks!
These blocks are special in the sense that you need to place them correctly according to a creation myth found within the temple, so instead of just regular blocks, they have a slightly more interesting look:
And here's the final blocks by the end of the video:
Since then [.....]
Now, for those math puzzles... First up, I've made the other two caves in this system, which was pretty straight forward after everything was completed in the first cave:
But then I thought the first one looks just too simple, especially when there's so much sand in it, so I decided to mix things up and make a slightly more interesting background for this one. So here we have the process:
And the final version of the first room, yay:
[.....]
Now we have this week's portrait, which features a giant of a man who works in the desert mine. His name is Big Brutus, and I have a feeling he's not someone you want to mess around with:
[.....]
As always, there's a ton of minor things to add and adjust right before an update, so here's a very mixed set of things, starting with two new expressions for one of the characters in town:
A slight edit of the first desert ruin room, where we've removed one of the scriptures for a small note on the wall, carved by some ancient apprentice:
In the second room of the ruins, we've moved down the altar for the gem so there's enough room for [.....]
Next up, we have another boss portrait! This one of course featuring the Solem boss you'll face off against inside the ruins:
Since he has a gem for a face, we thought what better name for this swell guy, than Sol-Gem? Said and done:
[.....]
Marino's second boss battle has been finished and fully implemented, so now it's time to spice up the little are where you face him! Previously, we'd left it pretty open, as we weren't sure exactly how big his battle arena would be (we like to prototype the fight first and base the area on how much space we feel is needed).
Below you can see the old area, with the battle taking place inside the darkened frame:
In order to spice this up, I [.....]
This week's portrait features a pirate hanging out in the saloon! In fact, he'll be one of the card players (whom I actually made a portrait of before - but his sprite got changed afterwards, so that old portrait will probably become a different NPC at some point instead):
[.....]
Can't have new bosses without new boss portraits, so here's an upgraded version of Marino's boss portrait, featuring his lovely shadow clones!
As you might remember, his last subtitle was The Ultimate Rival, however, as the story progresses some things change... Why an "ultimate friend" would fight you? I guess you'll just have to play through the story and see!
I've mentioned this before, but the relationships between the characters haven't been super fleshed out, a fact we are well aware of and [.....]
There are more caves in the making! Those math puzzle caves had to be designed, and to mix things up I decided to go for a slightly different color scheme compared to the rest of the caves in the desert:
It looks a little bare right now, so we'll probably add some more details, maybe in the form of statues of numbers, or perhaps even of the number wizard who made these challenges in the first time! For now though, here's the first iteration of [.....]
Progress on the desert continues! We've now started implementing things in those desert ruins, where you'll face another boss battle. When I mentioned there was gonna be an Indiana Jones-y scene in here, some of you wondered of what kind... I think this GIF should answer that question for you:
WIP of course, this is but the first step of the iteration!
Speaking of iterations, we're also working on the boss! This Solem is a very dangerous guy who likes to use his laser in [.....]
In the animation department, Fred has been hard at work with some cool environmental things that will appear in the desert! First up, we have the frozen cacti that will unlock a shortcut further into the desert, once you reach a certain season orb:
Second, a rope ladder! Since there's a place where we really want the player to be able to move up and down quickly (though only after getting there the first time), we decided to introduce a rope ladder that you'll be able [.....]
Can't have a beach town without tourists, so the second portrait this week will feature a guy shopping for souvenirs at the market place in Port Monnaie: currently, he's very interested in a t-shirt!
[.....]
The first portrait this week features the hat salesman of Port Monnaie, which we actually have decided to give quite a story. Because Helmut is a real life name that's simply too good to pass up on, we decided to name this guy just that. However, seeing as we have a helmet called Helmit, we didn't want to confuse people too much by having two characters with very similar names.... So we decided that Helmut and Helmit will be friends!
As such, you old acquaintance from [.....]
Cheers!
