Dev Log - #10

Yeah... so everything we worked on this month has been [spoiler after spoiler], so this next update was bound to be tricky ~

Fortunately, I have a few things I can show. 

Starting off, we're finishing up a deadline [today], and have a Build worth showing to Humble ~ (for context, see Devlog #8). It's been a hectic few months, especially after needing to take a break prior due to me moving and team crunch avoidance!

We're proud of our progress, and have been really eager to get some external eyes on it, though we've also been holding back a ton some a sharing standpoint *while* working on the demo (and before Humble seeing the final product)

We've also started working on some post demo plans, such as more Pipeline changes, going over lessons learned, and Production Ramp-up planning + re-architecture work that will make it easier and quicker for designers to change things without them needing a lot of coding knowledge.

Character Graphics Update

I've mentioned it in a previous update, but we're still working on height characters and sprite simplification on characters, and I'm here to announce a new "victim": Burney

His belt and cool train boots were going to be a nightmare to animate, but we still wanted him to maintain similar conductor/driver energy with a mixture of "visiting uncle" energy, so this was the outcome :)

Here's some more examples of sprite updates of these "gun" slingers, Drop and Nono. The idea is to take their design, and distill it down to the most critical components, and reduce the amount of extra details, while exaggerating others to make them feel a littler more "compact".

We're also working on making Breeze even cuter, though this is still a work in progress and will definitely be a part of our new pipeline in the near future:

UI Updates

We're still iterating on the game's UI, to account for new and important information that will be shown on the screen, such as current weather parameters, like Temperature and Humidity for example. These aspects that be controlled/influenced by player action, and can bring forth side effects to the level and those in it, for example:

Changes to Weather Parameters in the area and on characters will be updated in both the HUD and near the "change".

There will also be screen wide effects, such as when an area is polluted, it will affect the air:

Gameplay things

Lastly, we've been experimenting with some "non-combat" game design things, mostly toward iterating how Breeze's abilities interact with the world, as well as how Breeze interacts with other characters. 

This has been a really fun process, and I'm sure it will become easier to test ideas once we make changes that will allow designers to jump in (cause right now, there's a lot of custom coding situations!)

Also, that fun little improvement I made with Cumuli's Cart 

Anywho, I hope this update makes up for the somewhat slow month (or two) of updates! Like I mentioned, a lot of progress, but also a little bit of holding back on showing things!

OH YEAH, btw, I'm also looking into Breeze plushes. More updates on that when I like, have the info to share.

Now here's a piece from BorkThunder of Strati training.