Meanwhile, Fred has started working on something slightly different; namely a set of new animations for a version of Dad you'll run into in the creepy version of Startington you'll find yourself very soon. What happened here?!
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It's been a while, but now it's time for another boss portrait! This one featuring, unsurprisingly, the eye boss we've been working on for quite a while now!
Without further ado:
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Evergrind City Improvements: Market Area
Next up in our Evergrind City improvements spree is the market area, where each of the market stands will get a little bit personality to make them stand out a bit more:
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Evergrind City Improvements: Lonely House
Next up, we're taking a look at the lonely house in the top right corner, which you'll eventually be able to reach through a bridge! Haven't quite decided if we still want to keep the quest to build it or if we'll just put it there one of these days and allow you to enter the house from the first time you enter town: we'll see. Other than that, a fishing boat and some minor decorations to spice up the area :)
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Monday Meeting: Final Dungeon Basics
With the Ghost Ship drawer ever closer to completion, it's finally time to start thinking about the future and the final dungeon! While we've had a bunch of loose ideas for it before, we felt it's time to sit down and iron out exactly how we want it to be.
The number one thing we've always known we wanted is for it to be a tower of some sort. While we don't feel the need for it to actually feel like a tower on the inside [.....]
(Sorry for the late post, once again I forgot to hit the schedule button... ;-;)
Meanwhile another update from the eye boss progress, featuring the WIPs of more attacks and animations slowly but steadily getting added:
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Evergrind City Improvements: Library Area
And now, some stuff around the entrance or library area of the town! New lampposts, a slightly fancier path leading up to the library, railing to protect people from falling into the stream, an improved library sign and some decorative mini-trees!
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Evergrind City Improvements: The Arena
Next up in our Evergrind Improvements spree comes the Arena, which is probably the one thing in Evergrind City that feels the most outdated in my opinion. In order to spice it up a bit we've done a complete new design, that stand out a bit more and is a bit more festive than the old one:
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Evergrind East Water Update
So to kick off the Evergrind improvements, we'll start off with the final (for now) piece of improvement in Evergrind East; the little fishing pond. We wanted to give this part a bit more detail, so we added a Grindea bust and some ruins to give it a bit of character, as well as some more of the greenery and a little path leading up to the pond:
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Next up in our improvement spree of the earlier areas is Evergrind City and the areas surrounding it!
We've previously talked about redesigning the city - and we might still get around to that at some point - but for now I'm confident any improvements I'll make to it at this point will be able to be transferred over to any new design we might make, so I haven't been too worried about that when thinking about what parts we can improve upon here.
Once more [.....]
Eye Boss Lasers & Symbols
Meanwhile the work on the eye boss continues, and the latest iteration of the laser attack now has proper lasers, and more eyes:
As you can see here, the trick is figuring out which eye colors are not present in the big eye, which will let you know which eyes won't be firing the laser. To make this a little easier we're also adding symbols to the eyes, making them easier to tell apart:
We haven't decided exactly which of these symbols we'll [.....]
Evergrind City Entrance Improvements
Next up, Evergrind City's entrance itself, a slightly bigger job adding some decorations and making the wall more prominent:
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Evergrind East & More Pillar Mountains Improvements
And so we'll start with the first two sketches, adding some more decorations first to the second Pillar Mountains map:
...and then we move to the area right before Evergrind City to spice up Evergrind East a little bit:
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A Sneak Peek of More Improvements
Meanwhile my work outside of the Ghost Ship continues with more improvements, and we're slowly working out way down to Evergrind East; here's a couple more of my sketches for more places we'll improve upon:
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More Eye Boss Prototyping
One of the things we've done today is working on tweaking one of the eye boss new attacks, featuring a barrage of eyes that will eventually explode! There are a bunch of sliders we can use to tweak this attack, and one of them is number of eyes:
And also the shape of the explosion circles, below with a more circular shape:
The one above is probably closest to what we're aiming for for now, but as with everything else this might be [.....]
In Fred's animation department, we're finishing up the eye boss..
...and moving on to more exciting things, namely the creepy things that will appear in that strange version of Startington that you'll soon be visiting, starting with some slime that will cover the entirety of your character:
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Pillar Mountains Improvements: Fisherman's Area
So, without further ado: The fisherman's area in lower Pillar Mountains! Getting some improvements, a little bit of everything:
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Going back to the overall Pillar Mountains improvements, it's time to take a look at the area surrounding Mumrik's tent! I felt this area felt a little bare, so decided to spice it up a bit with some more stuff:
Next up we'll do something similar to the area surrounding the fisherman on the next map, and after that it's time to continue scouting more areas to improve upon! [.....]
More Startington Home Versions
So, this Startington Home will have multiple versions, and it's time to get going! First a reminder of the first version, and then each consecutively version as they will become available to you, culminating in a version where things have gone a bit... messy to say the least:
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