MilkyNail

Hello, everyone! Sadly, there’s still no demo today. But these last two weeks were extremely productive! Next time, I plan to give you at least something, my good people. We need cutscenes, dialogue, some polishing, and lewd art. Sounds manageable! For now, let’s start reading!

Starting light with a bunch of small changes! I added a disclaimer and music to the main menu and two locations. Reworked the nature sounds a bit. The NPC and the teleportation stones now display small “interaction” icons when the player is near. NPC can now walk around and stop (and turn) when he has something to say (WIP) or when the player is near. I fixed respawning and added teleportation (both in and out). The main character now performs a dash with a running animation and slight incline.

The artist created neat assets and three layers of background for the second location, the Village, and drew pictures of the first NPC and the enemy. The animator finished polishing the main character’s animations and started working on the two new characters mentioned earlier. After a lot of work on state machines and the spine code animations work like a charm. They are much smoother now, at least..

I reworked the main character’s melee attack. Now, it deals damage once per sword swing, consists of two-combo attacks, and able to deal damage while actual animation plays. The character even steps forward a little when swinging the sword! So cute:3

I added a ranged attack with a pretty “cut” effect on hit. Press the right mouse button to freeze and slow time while preparing a “magic drop”. It’s super fast and precise, and it comes with a handy aim line! It can even headshot enemies! Yes, I added critical hit zones to the enemies. But beware: taking damage will interrupt the aim!

The new enemy is a deer mage that can cast slow magic orbs. An orb forms at the end of it’s staff and starts moving toward a player, literally following you, and slowly decreases in size. It explodes on contact or after expiring. If it hits you, you take damage based on the orb’s current size. You can also hit it with a melee attack!

As I said, I’ll try to give you something playable in two weeks. The work is progressing, but the amount of it is crazy! [No more abandoned projects]

Hello, everyone! I must confess that the first week of the month was a disaster. I was completely overwhelmed by a very mid task: creating a “finite state machine” for the main character that would manage it’s animations. My mind simply was failing to process this task over and over again.

But after a week, I finally set up the “machine,” and now all of the main character’s animations are running smoothly! Hooray! I had to learn how to use another plugin for this.

I never mentioned this before, but I almost fucked up the whole project due to careless manual backups some time ago. I got very lucky that time, but I knew I had to do something about it. Now, I’m sleeping tight knowing that I have reliable daily backups with version management. Second hooray!

I also spent a couple of days fixing the particles that the main character would emit while running and jumping, as well as the camera. Both had some.. jitter. Now they don’t jitter.

I’m currently in the middle of setting up the second and final location, Village. The sky with clouds is set up, the ground is ready, and the nature assets are almost finished. The artist is working on the background and an NPC for that location. I’m adding a behavior tree so the NPC can walk and talk.

Sorry again for this one-week disaster. I’m back and working. [No more abandoned projects]

Hello, everyone! Last time, I bragged about the idle pose of the main character. Now, I’m ready to show you the very first location! 

The artist created a complex background with six (!) layers for the forest fight location, including the ground and nature assets like bushes and trees. Oh, there are also ground inclusions like bones and stones! I added all of these elements to the game, set a nice parallax effect, make grass shake when the player passes by. And the clouds and moving, too. Damn, I had great time putting everything together~

The animator is working on the last animation of main character these days, and while he does that, I’m trying to make the main character use Spine instead of the placeholder animations I created months ago. It’s not a fast process…

Oh, and I added a dash! The main character can use it now, it’s pretty cool.

How about some quality-of-life changes? Now, when the game loses focus, it pauses automatically! The “breathing” effect has also been improved, the camera moves up and down smoothly now.

I also created a document with ideas for future NPCs and quests. I won’t use it anytime soon, but it’s nice to be able to write down good ideas as they come to me. Work is progressing! I’m absolutely sure that I won’t be able to show a demo in two weeks, but a month sounds pretty solid. P.S.: I hope you had a good Halloween~ [No more abandoned projects]

Hello, everyone! The last two weeks were quite rough. The real work starts now! As it starts, we’re experiencing some minor problems with.. everything. After all, we are a team of three now. And we’re learning to work together.

First of all, I found a pretty good Spine animator. He and I think alike, he has a lot of experience, and the prices are good. After a week, I already have five or six animations of the main character (we need twice as many). I should also mention that I started learning a few things about Spine, but it’s really difficult for me for some reason.

Before we began, however, I had to create a proper design document and write down all the tasks for the animator and artist for a month. It took me four or five days to complete it, but after that, the future game started to take shape! I think the first demo will be ready in a month or a month and a half.

What about my good old artist friend? She’s been working nonstop the last week because there are a lot of tasks ready for her. She drew the main character from different angles for the animations and started working on locations.

Slowly but surely, we are getting there. As I said before, some time was wasted on fixing work processes. But I have to say something. The previous attempt at making Homelands (the previous 2D game) finished at this very step. Nothing worked, and the development was jammed for good. This time, everything is working like a charm and I’m super happy about this!  [No more abandoned projects]

Hello, everyone! I’m happy to report that we’ve started to work on the game’s art side! I also learned the very basics of shaders.

After publishing the previous post, the first thing I did was write a little design document for the game’s visuals. Then I contacted good fellow (and very talented) artist girl and asked her to help with the game design. She agreed and sent me some good artwork shortly after. I’ve attached one of her pics. It’s just a concept, but I already love it! The next task is to create the main character, which is currently in progress.

Not so long ago, I also started looking for animators to bring the game to life. I’m still rummaging through resumes and collecting candidates. It’s looking really good, I already found a few skilled people. I hope we’ll find a new team member (the third one) in just a few days. I’m going to keep the team small, without sound designers and concept artists. Not like I did a year ago. Let’s try this new approach.

Before I started looking for animators, I had some “free time” while waiting for our artist to decide on the future style. I added a version number and a changelog to the main menu. Then I moved the buttons around in the pause menu and added a quit button. Now, a “press again to exit” window pops up in both the pause and main menus.

What’s next? Shaders! I wanted to learn the basics of this gamedev magic. And I learned a thing or two. After several days of severe headaches and studying spatial and temporal trigonometry, I can perform basic tricks. For example, I can make the main character flash white when it takes damage! Or add a vignette to the borders of the screen. I also tried playing around with the enemy’s projectile, but it already looked pretty cool, so I just fixed a few bugs without changing it’s appearance.

I can’t wait to create a demo with art and animations, but for that, I must find a really good animator… [No more abandoned projects]