Big game development update #6
It's been another three more months of developments, so high time for another bigger progress update. Let's start with the biggest items and go from there:
Spriters and animators
We officially have a spriter on the team: Kohari! I've been working with her for a while now so it was a little while coming. And since it was a gradual process there won't be any shift in visuals or development really. It's just good to have the added stability.
Check out her work on this plushy.. I mean.. effigy quest item:
As for animators. Last time I was working with two. Both cooperations have since dropped off for differing reasons. Honestly, looking for capable and reliable talent has proven to be a big time-consuming and demoralizing headache. So I've decided to lean more on Kohari, and now consider myself as the animator where needed (as I already needed to tweak all incoming results anyways).
Character animations
Which leads into the new character animations and actions.
Big strides have been made in this area, such as:
- All idle animations are completed
- The default sword attacks are completed (incl. for all sword upgrades)
- All visuals for collectable tunics (and gauntlets) have been completed
- The character can now grab, push and pull objects
- The lamp replacement item has been implemented
- The mirror replacement item has been implemented, along with a nice teleportation character animation
- The new cloak item has been implemented, along a new set of movement animations
Enemy visuals
Three new enemy types have been given the planned visual overhaul and are now fully done. This includes the subboss of the upcoming demo dungeon, which was a lot of work! Additionally, early spritework for the remaining demo enemies is already ready to implement, so expect more good news on this matter in the next update.
Menu updates
Nearly all items, quest items and collectables now have new visuals and descriptions in the menus. Also, for flavor and guidance, Murray (=
) has decided to gift you a little commentary for every per item you select. He swears it'll all be useful descriptions, but I don't know... Sounds kinda sus.
Anyway, moving on. The Journal page has temporarily been disabled for the upcoming demo.
HUD updates
Some slight tweaks have been made. Bomb visuals are now included and the health alarm has been replaced with a visual effect on the character sprites themselves.
Sound effects
I've talked about this in earlier updates, but this remains a challenge. Nevertheless small steps have been made. The combined number of new sound effects needed for the next demo has shrunk to 64.
Social media presence
As planned my media presence has been slightly expanded once again. I'll likely leave it like this for a little while until I have an early demo ready and/or have an early kickstarter link to promote.
Here's all the places I can now be found (not counting my Itch profile)
Weekly updates:
Twitter -
https://twitter.com/HornofBalance
Mastodom -
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@HornofBalance
Weekly updates and devlogs:
Discord -
https://discord.gg/redHXyZ2Gc
ZFGC forum -
http://zfgc.com/forum/index.php?topic=33701.msg376449
(Bi) monthly updates:
Reddit - follow me @: u/HornofBalance
Gamemaker forums -
https://forum.gamemaker.io/index.ph...e-zelda-style-topdown-action-adventure.45087/
Mailinglist - Just send me your emailadress
And more
Of course there have also been a series of bug fixes and tweaks performed. The text engine has been updated to now also display who is talking. The demo dungeon has received updates to several rooms to make puzzles more intuitive. And some smaller quality of life gameplay improvements have been made.
Check out the more extensive weekly posts over on Discord and ZFGC (or follow me on Twitter) if you want to learn more about the inbetween progress being made.