Vilya's Workblog

Sometimes you think you've completed something, but some testing and/or feedback shows you have to remake parts (or all) of it! This happened today with the obstacle course room that I showed you previously.

Here's what the entrance of the room originally looked like:

After some testing with the cutscenes and all graphics in place, we wanted to make some changes. For one, we wanted the room to have less winter and more of the other seasons. We also wanted the thorn-thingies on each side of the room to appear after you enter, so they had to be removed and inserted through a cutscene instead:

We also thought it's be cool if the room was winter to begin with, then having it change into a room of all seasons through magical means, so I did a version of it that's entirely winter, as well:

I've also been adding some decorations to the top part of the dungeon, on the walls, as can be seen here:

First version, no decorations

Decorations added!

In other news, we had a bit of a meeting today where we discussed what kind of items would drop in the dungeon.

We agreed on that each of the enemies will drop their own hat, so that'll be a total of six hats to find in the dungeon! You're also gonna be able to find the hammer, spear and sword that the knights wield, and a bunch of other things (some which will be crafted). Here you can see a bunch of those drops:

Since my part in making the Season Change temple is more or less done, we've started talking about what we'll do next. I'm quite a bit ahead of Teddy & Fred at this point since there's still a lot of animations that need to be made and implemented, so I've started sketching around making super basic concepts of another area, the one that will appear before the fourth (out of five!) temple.

Obviously what you see above is just some fooling around with colors and what kind of props we'd use, but basically we're thinking about making some kind of desert area, with some sort of twist.

That will, however, be a discussion we'll have tomorrow! Stay tuned and I'll let you know what we decide on (and feel free to share any ideas you might have in the comments) :D

Quite a while back, we made the enemies for the next area, Mt:Bloom. Today I started making one of their cards, because why not? The enemy in question doesn't have a name yet, but I like to call it the 'Spinsect', cause it spins when it attacks while also looking like an insect...! Yeah!

If you're curious about what it looks like, some of its animations can be viewed in this very old weekly recap!

Sketching away..!

Creating line art!

Color blocking... :)

Adding a bunch of shades!

Adding a simple background to establish where things are happening

Aaand the card is done!

A few posts ago I mentioned how I had finally finished improving all of the portraits in the game! Well... Turns out there were a few that still stood out among the rest.

There might be more out there, so I won't say I'm completely done again, but for now I'll only be fixing these three:

Miss Broomie

Ms Broomie in the game: a bit too many shades!

Rendered version: before and after!

Finished sprite to the right, old one to the left :)

Uncle Vev

Uncle Vev in the game! A bit too many shades here as well.

Rendered version, before and after!

Finished sprite to the right, old one to the left!

Mrs Wourie

Mrs Wourie's biggest problem was her hair and the highlights,
which don't really with with the new style!

Mrs Wourie's rendered version, before and after!

Finished sprite to the right, old one to the left :)

Remember the Obstacle Course from last week? Well, it's time to give it a proper room, rather than that silly place holder art :)

Place holder sketch, courtesy of Teddy!

As usual, I start with the basics, adding the walls and, for now, a floor with just one color:

On each side of the room there will be these huge thorny thingies that will hurt you if you touch them! Here I've started to sketch them in a bit, so I know approximately how large I should make them:

Since this room will contain all three seasons at once, this prop will need to be part frozen, part green and part dried out at once, which I've also indicated in the sketch above :)

I take some time to render this thing in all three seasons and add a bunch of thorns to it except for in the area where you'll be fighting:

The next step is to start decorating the floor! In this room there will be patches of autumn- and summer floors here and there, with snow lying atop it all:

Once I'm satisfied with the way the patches look, I start putting out details such as leaves, flowers and stone tiles:

Lastly, I create a simple edge to show where the ice part of the obstacle course begins, and fill in the ice. I also decorate the snow with tiles, frozen grass and flowers that are found in the winter rooms across the temple:

...and it's all done! Time to move that prototype into this rendered version of the map :)

Have you all been playing the latest update of the beta? It runs up to the Hydra mini-boss and was updated two days ago! If you haven't tried it yet, be sure to update your steam beta to give it a go.

The next step of the dungeon will be a couple of more rooms (with puzzles!) and an "obstacle course" where you'll make your way through some annoying environmental hazards as well as battling a bunch of extra difficult enemies! The last couple of days we've been working on testing a prototype of said obstacle course, and here you can see the three challenges you'll face:

Part One: Thorns

In this part of the obstacle course you need to navigate your character through a space filled with thorns, with wind blowing you character in different directions! It's not too difficult, as it's only the first of three different obstacles you need to get through in one go, but it serves as an introduction of how the later part of the room will work!

Part Two: Fight!

This fight is different from others in the temple as all enemies will be be using their special abilities! The fight consists of three waves that become increasingly difficult, and since the room is considered to be all seasons at once, there's no way to use season swapping as a way of making certain enemies easier.

Part Three: Thorns & Ice

The third and final part of the obstacle course consists of basically the same challenge as the first (wind and thorns) only this time you'll be performing on ice! It's quite difficult, especially after getting beaten by the enemies of step two, but I'm confident that with a bit of tweaking it'll be just enough of a challenge!

Yesterday I mentioned that I was working on improving the entrance room of the dungeon a bit, as we felt it looked a little plain. While we can't do much about the actual floor of the area due to enemies that will appear here, we still have walls that can be decorated.

I started off making a couple of sketches of what could be interesting decor:

We wanted any decorations to relate to the seasons and nature, themes that are quite important in this dungeon. In the end, we decided to go with the last sketch!

Above you can see the WIP. In the first step, I made some pretty basic tree trunks. At this point the only difference between them is the color. In the second step I added leaves to the trunks, while keeping the trunks the way they were. In the last step, I've repainted some of the trunks a little to give them some slight variance, while still keeping the symmetry. I also made the oval decorations between them, with colors symbolizing the four seasons.

In the end, this is what the room looks like now, but there are still some details to be fixed: Fred is going to add some darker shades around the edges of the water, and there will be animated water around each of the trees!

Today (actually two days ago once this is posted!) was one of those days where I've been all over the place workwise! I've done quite a bunch of smaller (and bigger) tasks, fixing things here and there.

The day started with a meeting where we checked what was left to do before the Temple of Seasons beta can go live. Our discussion turned into a list of bugs and fixes we wanted to implement, and it kind of made us realize the terrible state our old bug- and fixlist was in. Basically, it was just a really, reeeeeaaally long list of suggestions, bugs and minor fixes written down randomly. A lot of them were very vague or unclear, and probably about half were already fixed.

To resolve this, I offered to clean up the list, and while I'm not completely done (the document is huge!), we've been able to create a slightly more organized 7-page document with most of the bugs and fixes we want to implement at some point.

We've sorted the bugs and fixes into categories depending on what part of the game they affect. There's Skills & Talents, Interface & Music, Multiplayer, Arcade Mode, and one category for each of the major areas in the game. Not all of these categories are full of bugs or fixes to be made, but as you can imagine there's quite a few things we'd like to address eventually. A lot (if not most) will probably wait until the game is near completion, though.

While working on the list I remembered a couple of small fixes that I could do real quick, so I got to work when I felt I had worked on the list for long enough:

Grass for the Farmhouse!

A shinier version of the Pet Menu button in your Character window

After all of that, I got back to working on what needs to be finished for the Temple of Seasons on my part. This included a spring version of the portrait room, 4 different versions of a locked door so there's one for each season and a zone title that shows when you enter the dungeon:

I also started working on decorating the entrance room a bit, which we felt was a bit plain. But that one I'll save for tomorrow! :)

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