Last week, as I was working on improving the first zone, I thought about something. In the corner of the map, there's this little statue, where a priest and his apprentices will be praying:

Well, since I made that statue, it has been reused at several other places due to it's neat tiny size, which means it's not really that special anymore, but more of a common decorative piece. And I thought that seemed kind of boring. 

So! I decided to make a new, grander statue for our priests to worship, and I wanted it to look more like Grindea. After all, Grindea is the Goddess even in the past, and this tiny statue doesn't exactly look a lot like her. 

Here's the video of my process:

In the end, here's what the new statue ended up looking like, and I personally think this is much better:

What do you guys think? :D

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Time for another mixed bag! In this one, it's time to do some minor fixes to stuff that looked weird! 

First up, the Caveling village:

It's a little bit empty, wouldn't you say? Not a lot of breakables or greenery here compared to the rest of the Mount Bloom maps. So, it's definitely time to add some more:

Second, ever notice something strange with the Caveling portraits? Well, I did...

There's a lot of green dots outside of their ears! Ick! Time to fix that as well:

Another thing that bothered me a bit that was portrait-related, was how the bigger miner portraits overlapped the text:

Taking the portrait into my reference document, I quickly noticed that the portraits were indeed bigger than the max as indicated by this red line:

As such, I cut the portrait to fit within the line, and there's officially no more text overlap:

Okay, remember how I talked about enjoying painting item drops yesterday? Lucky me had to do a few more drop appearances for the side-quest rewards (as well as an item you may or may not get at all, but which will make a different kind of appearance)...

Finally, as we move back to the time travel zone again, I decided to change the color of the grass a bit, to give it a slightly warmer feel. The old grass, shown below, had a slightly more blue-ish hue:

While this one, the new grass, is more yellow and warm, which I hope will increase the impression of this being a cozy village (plus, it hurts the eyes a bit less):

That's all for this mixed bag! See you next time :D

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As you know, the most important feature of any serious RPG is the fishing. As such, Mount Bloom would be a pretty lame map without a fishing spot, right? And of course, if there's a fishing spot, there needs to be stuff you can actually fish, too!

Time to fill the clear mountain water of Mount Bloom with some cute fishies!

So the top one is the Anglerfish, hidden deep beneath the waves where it eats unsuspecting smaller fishes, such as the Wimp! Like some of the rare fishes, it has two icons, which allows us to use a larger one when the character holds it above his/her head, and a smaller one that fits inside the inventory circle.

The blue one is actually not made for Mount Bloom. Instead, we're swapping the Rock Fish from pillar mountains for this one (which is supposed to be a Salmon, btw). The Rock fishie will instead be moved into Mount Bloom, where we feel it fits a bit better.

The purple one is a little crystal fish, and the gold one... a gold fish!

Then we have the slimy Mossfish, and a message in a bottle! Which may or may not contain a side quest.... ;)

Painting fishes and other item sprites is a lot of fun! Good thing we're making a game where there will be a lot of items to collect~ :D

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Wooooooooooah guys. Okay, I'm gonna make this post super short. I just spent like 5 hours cleaning out the storage of our apartment. Wow. So much random crap. So much DUST! Did you know dust makes my face all swollen? Well... Now you and I know... Never again! (I'm so exhausted)

As you may know we tend to use Friday and Saturday as our weekend, and then start the work week on Sunday instead. Cause I guess we're strange like that, and setting your own schedule is one of the perks of managing your own business! That's also why Fred streams on Fridays, cause he's at home so he can speak english without being teased at the office... ;)

So anyway, that's why this Friday post is uploaded at 1 am Swedish time, cause I've been busy cleaning stuff and I've more or less given up on remembering to schedule posts ahead of time, haha!

(This post is turning longer than I intended.......... ON TO THE GRINDEA STUFF!)

Today we'll be looking at what I THINK might be the last Mount Bloom background, for now at least. It's for an optional poison challenge with a bunch of huge and tough crystals that won't break unless you hit them a bunch of times! So, clearing your way to the chest is gonna be tough...

Prototype Version

Sketch

Walls & Floor

Greenery!

Editor Stuff

Okay, so a few things.

First of all, why is the map so long? Basically it's because when Teddy started prototyping this map, the corridor was going from top to bottom instead of doing the u-turn of the current version. When he changed the layout, he just didn't resize cause if we should decide to make the challenge longer, it's easier to add stuff without making the background bigger - otherwise a lot of colliders might have to be moved, and I, being tired as I am, forgot to cut the extra space from the screenshots!

Second, some of the items seem to appear above the lower walls. This is because the lower walls will appear above everything in the actual game, but in this screenshot they're still on a lower layer.

Third, the crystals all look the same, you say? Yes, that is true! In the game however, they will be randomly generated, and this crystal is just one of the different versions, which serve to indicate where they'll all appear.

....So apparently I ramble a lot when I'm tired and write blog posts. This probably turned into one of the longest ones ever posted rather than the quick piece I claimed it would be. Oh well! Time to grab something to eat and finally start relaxing! See you in the next post~ :D

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It's been a while since we made one of these hat posts! 

Since I had to make a gas mask as a reward for one of the side quests, I thought I might as well throw in 3 more and make another one of those hat videos :)

I pretty much freestyled these, just painting whatever I felt like. We haven't decided where you'll find these yet, (or if they'll even make it to the game) but it's good to have a bunch lying around for those random chests (or quests!) we tend to add. 

In the end, I decided to change the gas mask a bit, keeping the eyes dark instead. I definitely think the new one looks cooler, anyway (and scarier - I'm not the only one who feel like gas masks are super  creepy, right?):

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Let's continue on with Mount Bloom quest preparations!  

One of the quests will have you meet another caveling guy, an odd fellow called Chix, who seems to have lost his pet in the caves.... Can you help him find his dear old friend?

Of course, in order to finish the phase challenges we've been working on, you have to actually reach them first. Time to add a new entrance to the cave system! Do you remember where it is?

Also, because we want to give the players a heads up on that these challenges are difficult and purely optional, we decided to add a machine to the room before heading into the phase challenges:

This machine will be powered on after you complete the mandatory phase challenges of the main story, after which it can be used to open the door. Upon doing so, you'll receive some sort of message or warning from the people who built this place about the dangers you'll be facing ahead. 

Originally we wanted the door to simply be open when you got here after finishing the first phase challenges, but we changed our mind to make sure our players have at least some heads up on that these challenges are supposed to be harder, and it doesn't matter if you actually finish them or not (unless, of course, you're after that elusive 100%... at which point I'm afraid you have no choice!)

Another quest I'm not sure if I mentioned before, is one where you have to get past a large number of heavy crystals, which don't easily break when you hit them. In fact, it takes a long long time to get them out of the way - and it's time you don't have. You see, the corridor where you'll find these heavier crystals is filled with poisonous gas! How will you ever get through to the other side?!

The original crystal (the second one from the left) was made by Fred, but as he left for Germany a few days ago and won't have as much time to work on the game there, I was tasked with adding a few stages of cracks, as well as the stump you're left with after breaking it!

Teddy is working on another quest, as well, one which I'm going to create a bunch of facial expressions for once the dialogue is finished. I won't give away too much, but let's just say Doctor Jones has found a huuuge crystal and needs your help transporting it away. Only... His idea of how to move it is, hmm, should we say slightly unconventional?

Okay, that's enough hints and details! Time to get back do doing quest rewards and that darn final background! :)

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In the prototyping post I mentioned that we wanted to change the dotted lines into something that the barrels were travelling along, as well as exchanging the sparks into electricity, to kind of make the challenge a bit more clear.

We decided to go with a kind of rail which transport platforms on which the barrels are placed. In order to make it easier to spot when a barrel is appearing, we also wanted to add a proper entry point rather than the mountain wall, on which we put a lamp which will indicate when a barrel is about to appear - kind of like the lamps in the Toy Factory which lets you know when the trains appear!

Here's a little video I made where I was working on the rails and barrel entrances: 

And here's the final map, with rails and entry points added (the barrels don't point the right way - they're simply there to show you what they'd look like when placed on the platforms):

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