Next room we'll focus on is the boss room! We want to make this room quickly to test out the boss battle in its actual setting, so I had to take a break from the other stuff to start working on it instead. Since we had a basic prototype up and running I already know approximately where everything should be in terms of distances and colliders, so all I gotta do is make sure I follow the sketch version:
Finished room:
[.....]
Second part of the mess hall! In this part we'll be decorating the place, adding some plates and whatnot to give the room a feel of actually being a place where people might come to eat.
First though, gotta make this uhm.. trolley thing? That you'll need to push around a bit to get to the other end of the room:
And now, all about decorating:
We still need to keep the tables somewhat empty so you can move around on them [.....]
So, as you know we've been talking quite a bit about a strange and creepy version of Startington that you'll visit during your stay in the ghost ship. This place will feature strange visions of things that have happened or things related to the game in a set challenges with a keyword each.
The first one we've prototyped is for 'expectations', and will deal with the expectations you put on yourself and that other might have on you, and it takes the shape of a rather strange [.....]
Time for the second part of the Mess hall, making all of those tables! I'll be using a bunch of old tables as a base and make them look a bit worse for wear and edit the colors around a bit. In the end, they will be decorated with stuff and ghosts will be dining by them on chairs as well, but one step at a time!
The room where it's at now:
[.....]
Today we'll start making one of the remaining rooms we've yet to finish up; the Mess hall! We've showed this room a couple of times already - it's the room with the creepy bridges. In this first part we'll get all the basics down, the correct walls and floors as well as some basic decorations; ropes, vines, boxes and so on.
There will be a bunch of floating tables here as well, but those we'll save for another time. For now, here goes:
[.....]
The second mechanic we've been playing around with has been something slightly different, yet reminding of something we've used before. In Tai Ming we had puzzles where you had to kill statues in the right spot, so that they pressed a button for you. In this dungeon, we'll do something similar.
Below is the WIP gif:
We use statues as the placeholder graphic here, but they will more likely be some kind of floating armors or some such.
The idea is that these armors [.....]
So these last bunch of days we've been playing around with a bunch of new puzzle ideas for the ghost ship - we really want to mix things up and get some interesting use out of these mechanics. So, first thing we've tried is using the spirit world mechanic to make a burning ghost light candles for you.
Here's a GIF showing our super early prototype:
Basically, the ghost ignores you while you're in the regular world, and will start chasing you once you enter [.....]
Bringing out Fred's Friday a bit early this week to take a look at what's happening with the skeletons and discuss a piece of their design!
So one thing we've been wanting to do with our skeleton enemies is to give them a quirk where their head will fall off and become an enemy of its own, sort of like the Jumpkin from Pumpkin Woods; a pretty easy enemy that you just whack over a couple of time to get rid of, but that serves as an [.....]
Time to start working on those colors! This is gonna take a while since the ship is super huge, so I'll split it in two parts (or however many are needed). In the first part we'll be dealing with the basic colors, getting them down somewhat in any case. Might change them around later but it's good to start with a base:
Obviously it's gonna get a lot more detailed than this, and the water will be animated as well. We're also considering changing the size [.....]
Meanwhile in Fred's department, it's time to finish up the crab enemy! We've designed this in a way that is kind of similar to the boar, which I think will become apparent once we start prototyping it. For now, here's a bunch of its animations during battle:
So cute! I personally think this might be the cutest enemy of the game. Who agrees with me?! [.....]
So the first thing we decided to change when running through the dungeon was the size of the first room - always amazing when your first big change is in the first place you see, right? We felt this room was a bit small and didn't give the proper introduction to the ship as a big and creepy place the way it should.
Same thing with one of the rooms on the third floor - previously we've been making a lot of too large rooms so [.....]
.... and here they are! The fantastic sketches made for the remaining rooms of the ghost ship dungeon!
The puzzle one is very unclear right now since we haven't decided exactly what kind of puzzle we want in there right now. Previously we wanted it to be one of those puzzles where you get chased by something in the ghost world, as I mentioned earlier, but now we're kind of feeling like putting in a phase shift puzzle instead - can't have [.....]
With the ghost ship progressing and most rooms actually already being finished, we've come to realize we've done something different with this dungeon that we haven't done before, and we're not sure it's a good thing.
Usually we start off with sketches of every room and make sure we can run through each of them in a row, just like the dungeon would actually be, before we make the final art. This time however, because Teddy and Fred were so busy getting the last bits of the desert completed, we decided against that and had me work on making the completed rooms first thing. What that has lead to is that we have a lot of finished [.....]
So, after showing the lineart to Teddy and Fred and having some discussions, we've decided to change it in a couple ways. First, let's take a look at what it looked like last:
First thing we wanted was to make the ship a bit higher, so with some quick editing here's what we came up with:
Then we also wanted to make it longer, adding a broken mast to make sure the area you'll be fighting in doesn't get too big. Another sketch of that [.....]
Meanwhile, the prototyping for the challenge room continues! Teddy has been making some tests with the absolutely disgusting bridges. We'll make a few more to mix the way they look up a bit, but at least now we know they look decent enough to run over:
It wouldn't really be much of a challenge if there was no way to fail though, so here we have an example of what kind of obstacles you'll be facing in this room, starting with some eerie eyes:
[.....]
So now that we have the sketch in place, let's transform it into something a bit more clear, getting that lineart up and running. Here's the first part:
As you can see, we haven't added anything cool the the bow of the ship yet; we'll see whether you'll actually even ever see that part of the ship ingame or not; might be that you won't and then it's pretty pointless to spent a bunch of time decorating something nobody will see!
As I mentioned before, [.....]
Alright, so we've seen a lot of the Ghost Ship interior, but so far we haven't talked much about what it looks like from the outside! As those of you who have played through the desert know, you'll catch a ride here from the Black Ferrets little boat. I've made a temporary sketch showing what the boat could look like, and placed the camera as it will be when you land there for the first time:
It's not visible right now but our idea is that the [.....]
And here we have the second batch of cabins, with their regular and spirit world versions:
Once everything else is in place, Fred will likely add some moving things to these rooms as well, for the bonus creepiness factor. Now, onwards to more rooms! We're almost there! [.....]
Now that the cabins have all been made, it's time to bring the darkness down and turn 'em scary and creepy for the spirit world! I'll mostly be using props from the previous rooms for this, so you kind of know the drill already.
First three cabins, normal/spirit world versions below:
[.....]
Cheers!
