Another couple of weeks and though I'm still coming down from the holidays I've already been quite active. I've finished up the new Shiver Bow, though I have to admit that the last few bits of it were surprisingly taxing to finish. (Mostly to do with all the extra little bits) Also I'm still a bit unsure of some elements that might cause performance issues. At some point I am going to have to go over the entire game and severely optimize it. (Price you pay for deciding to go for 60fps instead of 30 I suppose! No regrets!)
Here is the completed shiver bow. There may be a few small changes made to the SFX (mostly the arrow release sfx) if they are too harsh or too loud. Also the weapon is a bit on the overpowered side in it's current form and will receive a small nerf and some of the elements presented here will be pushed into upgrade items too. (like the shards bursting off during a supercombine and the number of arrows in the quiver)
The weapon effectively functions as quick and easy to use with its primary drawback being that it does not stun on impact. To remedy this, you can jump to keep mobility while continuing to fire. (There is greater friction when you are on the ground) However, there is a max number of arrows in the quiver that you can see on the energy bar. When you are on the ground, the ammo is infinite. However, while you are in the air, it regenerates very slowly.
When shooting arrows into a target, they build up one by one. After hitting 4, ice will begin to crystallize on the target. After hitting 6, it will supercombine and auto destruct after a short delay. The stacks also auto destruct if the target perishes from initial damage. At less than 4, the damage only affects the target. Above four, it creates a small aoe and a big chunk of damage. At 6 the AOE is significant and the damage much larger too. Damage to block is very high at 4+. The large glowing chunks that come off during a super combine can also deal damage to enemies. I still need to do recolors for each power level so here you only see the weapon at it's max power. At lower power it will be weaker too. Just needs some balancing right now.
Of course, that's not all I have done. I've also gone ahead and created an unlock in the game a 'Windforce Artifact' that Shopia will sell you and tell you how it functions. (I'll tell you here too)
After purchasing it, you can then charge up your windforce spell by holding down the button. A small cyan meter will fill up and then flash and make a sound when it has charged. Release the cast button and you'll inflate like a blimp! But if you continue to charge it, instead you will forcibly inflate and pop! (Which will hurt you) This will allow you to inflate yourself like a blimp when you like at the cost of the windforce spell. (It's still 4 MP to use it though!) As of right now I still need to run it through full testing just to see if there is any area I need to carefully block off to prevent you from reaching something you shouldn't be able to with it, but otherwise it seems to be completely done. Well, there is a leftover mechanical issue with spell casting using grounded spells which currently allows you to cast a spell while walking off a ledge and that could be exploited so I will be fixing that at some point. It's fine to cast most spells while walking off a ledge, but in this case, I can see it being very exploitable. (There is one area I already went to and patched it up just in case...)
Anywho, you'll be able to buy it from Shopia like I said after you find the Silver Crystal Coin along with a couple of other new upgrades that I believe I have talked about in the past.
I would say these are the two main pieces that I've worked on. Xazelle will be up next. (Just a little bit more tweaking on the Shiver Bow and I'll start working on her) Then I will jump back and forth between working on the game and the other NPC tfs I need to catch up on. (A shripe belly dancer and filimuri in the falling stars ceremony and a small little area dedicated to the holiday!)
I do have a few other things I have been working on too. The first is just a new enemy type for the next area. Ghosts!
These nuisances will be all over the place in the next area, threatening to help you along to your doom a little quicker. Though I'm showing two of them, I'd like to create a few appearances for each. In fact, I've been debating offering to allow Patrons who have been donating a lot and over a long time to have a little ghostie design added. These enemies will only have two real animations. This idle animation you see above and an inflation/popping animation. As you can imagine, ghosts manifesting themselves into some kind of physical force can be taxing! So much so that keeping themselves corporeal is difficult! Adding some wind to them will make them inflate rather big and then pop!
Unfortunately this means that you cannot use them as a platform, but maybe some of you will find watching them inflate and pop satisfying. The only additional animation will be a generic 'poof' when you defeat them like normal. There will be quite a few of them to chase you down and I plan to have an area where they continuously respawn. (Though they will also have a small chance of dropping candy so hopefully that will balance it out) Really they are one-two shot enemies so they're more so intended to overwhelm you. I may also add a small bit of acceleration to their speed or some kind of pause then charge that they will sometimes do. I'll decide once I actually sit down to program them.
As I said though, I'd like to be able to offer something to those of you who have been pretty dedicated, though I am still debating it and if you'd like to, please comment about your thoughts on it. I would likely aim to make it so that if you have given at least 150$USD then you'd be allowed to make a ghostie. (And one time per account)
My plan for this would be to make it mostly stock standard to cut back on the work load. So both the idle and inflation animation would be the same for all of the ghostie girls. It would mostly be face, hair, curvature shape, colors, and clothes. I do plan on having a few more ghostie types added (Elf, a'garian, dolder, dvari, filimuri) so the body types will have a little more variety available to them, but be generally uniform in nature. (Also if you don't want your ghostie to pop, I can have them fade out instead. Just let me know) I will say that I am thinking that I will go with a 3Bs inflation look so if you are curious what the inflation is likely to look like, then I would recommend checking out the NPC Ridra's tf.
Also I won't have a restriction on what the character looks like. Meaning you don't have to fit your character into one of the species molds at all. Though I will require mandatory pointy ears for all! (I jest. Any will be fine) My only requirements will be no nudity and no male characters unless the inflation includes tfing into a girl.
If I do this, then I will add a tier to the patron just so that it's public knowledge that you can be eligible for it and not just have it buried in a post.
And that's mostly it. Though I do have one other thing to show and it's the spell that I will be working on. As I said, I was going to add a new form of sorts that was more mobile. Well, this will be a transformation spell that you can find. (Well not transformation, but summoning) By using her superior magical capabilities, Aria will be able to forcibly summon and merge with a demon changing her into a four arm, four booba demon version of herself.
~Special idle animation for this form~
My plan for this will be that you can cast the spell for a small up front cost. Something like 2-3mp. Then, while you are transformed, your energy drain pauses. Instead of taking damage to your energy, instead hits will remove two mp from you. If you don't have two mp left over, then you'll transform back. The transformation doesn't have a duration and you can turn it off at any time. (I will likely make this that you have to hold down and then press and hold the cast key for a brief moment, but not 100% just yet)
While in this form, your weapon will be replaced with a wide claw attack and combo. So it will be a little like the wind blade weapon, but faster and probably slightly weaker. I will decide more on it when I'm actually programming it.
Pressing the magic cast key will throw out a small projectile along a horizontal path and then pressing it again will teleport you to it. With a short cooldown. A kind of 'blink' ability that you can use to go through some walls.
And, of course, you'll have the ability to double jump, something that's been requested for a while. Aria will still be able to hold ledges too so you can use it to drop and then jump or jump twice, though the height of the second jump will be a little bit shorter.
For her booba though I have to say that sadly I am going to limit how many variations there are. It's a lot more likely that I will make it part of an upgrade that will give some variance and then just have one or two extra sizes or something of the sort, but make those extra sizes quite the difference!
As well, Aria won't be able to pickup any powerups in this form. So again, sorry, but no inflatable demon form Aria. (At least not for now) The demon inside her protects her against it!
Ok, so now that's all I really have to say. Of course, comment your thoughts and such if you have any!
With the poll results in, looks like we'll have a matching pair with filimuri during the Night of Falling stars! I'll need to come up with something a little festive for her, but filimuri don't really wear much often so her outfit won't be much.
As for her tf, it could either be a positive boon of some kind or a curse. I imagine the most likely scenario would be that the light she drops in comes back to her and causes something to happen. Hmmm, though what kind of transformation could be a curse? Other than being turned into a gobbo! (Or being double cursed back into your thay'valay form) Considering she'll be underwater at the time, if it's anything to do with air, she'll likely be pushed rapidly toward the surface. Though the curse could be anything. I'll have to think more on it.
I've fallen a bit behind on things so I'm going to try and catch up on the NPCs. I have to finish blimping Xazelle and create a fun shripe belly dancer. Then I'll be able to make a filimuri for this holiday! (And I'll create a small little festival area you can visit and find her)
Next polls will be coming soon! Just going to replace one or two of the options and then I'll post them.
I'm definitely slowed down by the holidays, but still managed. I've gotten most of the implementation done on the Shiver bow including making it have a dynamic aiming for it's left/right direction. So if you move, or the enemy moves, it will swap which side you fire from. It still is limited to firing horizontal (out of the bow) before curving, but you shouldn't have any frustrating moments where you fire and the enemies is on the other side so your arrow flies off in the complete wrong direction.
The animations are all fully done save for the explosion animation. I have the lock on cursor done, though I'd like feedback on it when you play with it. I am just kinda meh on the implementation to be honest. When you see it, if you remember, feel free to comment on it.
Anyway, I need to adapt the damage done still and also I need the 'trigger' animation proper and the SFX changed, but that's really it.
I've also started on another level for the main area so we're starting to get into the actual meat of it, but won't be much to show just yet. I need to actually make the enemies and I would like to make some more tiles too. Need this dark forest to STAND OUT.
I've also got a couple more NPCs who will show up in Avlon and they'll give you a bit of advice about the Filimuri that you're about to face. Not sure if I mentioned, because I am very forgetful, but I have had a few individuals who did not even know that when your power bar turns green, you are poisoned. Well they'll give you a few quick tips about this including how to get rid of the poison. They'll also tell you some info about how to fight the filimuri. (Get close so they don't block)
I also fixed a really annoying display issue with bouncing booba associated with the new landing animation. It's fully fixed out. Just something that took a lot of 'attention to detail' to fix. You know, sometimes things that you think will take a LONG time don't actually take that long. (Mun, for example, was programmed in a day and a half) while others really take you off guard for how basic they are, but consume a ton of your time. (This stupid bug stole half a day from me but it's mostly just having to go in and manually examine every single level, realize I had them off by one pixel, then realize it was actually two horizontal... and... look it's just sometimes I am a bit dumb ok?)
Other than this, most of the work has been just gently massaging what I have already. I hate to not have much to say during an update, but I really don't. Honestly most of my time has been about stressing for holidays since I spend time with family, but that time is coming/gone so soon things will be back to normal. I am genuinely excited for the next update, but I just need to actually get on top of it. When the new year comes, I will be full throttle on it. I still have Xazelle and the belly dancer shripe to do. Xazelle really shouldn't be too hard. I just need to ... BLIMP her... hahahaha that will be fun ^_^. The shripe girl I dunno what will happen yet, but I'm eager to design her and blow her up too! I also have a gift I need to do so that will hitch me a min, but after that Xazelle will get turned into a big blimp!
Really, I just want to say thanks to all of you <3. When I think about my game the thing that keeps me going most is thinking about those of you who keep around for so long. People come and go, but those that stay really make me want to work hard on the game. I hope in the future as I continue I won't disappoint you!
Oh uh, here's those NPCs btw!
Elowi!
She says she's a princess, but you're not really 100% sure about that. What kind of princess wears this outfit?!?!? Well... that actually does seem to track. She does kind of look a bit exotic right? Maybe she has some valuable advice?
Maldi!
A cute preggers elf! She used to be a wizard like you until... well actually she wasn't a wizard... but she got preggers all the same. Are those fairies inside or does she have a partner? She'll give you a little advice about filimuri regardless.
Alright I think that's all to report for the time being. I have some things I'd like to share but I am keeping my mouth shut until the next patch!
Time has been flying with the holiday season going on. I've had a lot going on in my life, but still managed in spite of it. All is well though so little more than a footnote. I do still have some other things to deal with and due to holidays I might not have as much time to work on the game til next month, but I'll still be doing so. I'll just flat out say the next build won't be out this month as there are too many things that need to be added.
Moving on, the first bit I have to report is just that I have added a couple new rooms to the game. One being a simple bonus room with an upgrade item and another which is part of the main path in the forest. I'll show more of this once I get the forest closer to completion, but you can refer to a past devlog if you would like to see how the theme looks. It's mostly still the same.
I also programmed in a couple more of the upgrade items like fully implementing the MP preservation unlocks. Now they just have to be added to the game. Well, one of them was added already at the very least, but there are others just waiting to be added. I forget if I had mentioned it but I put a couple more NPCs into the game. One of them talks to you about the forest key for the locked door that I am pretty sure I mentioned in a previous devlog. The second NPC talks about something you'll be able to find in an upcoming area after the dark forest. I plan to add a few more of these simple NPCs as I realized that I didn't ever have any who would just talk to you with advice on how to handle enemies and for some things like poison status effect.
Anyway, here's those two NPCs Calypso and Bella respectively.
I'm rather pleased with both their looks, but especially Calypso and her big fairy pig tails and body suit.
As you've probably taken notice, I also did all the main legwork for the October NPC Xazelle. I'll start doing her tf animation after I finish up the Shiver Bow. And speaking on that, I also did go ahead with a simple bowdraw animation and the aerial version of it. With this, you can also see what the arrow projectiles will end up looking like. Just have to implement them and get all the FX for them done. Though the animations will take a bit longer because... well you can probably guess. Boobs.
This time around I may skip out of making the boobs fully animate in a complex fashion like the melee animation since that took significantly longer to manually animate them all. I'll test some booba sizes out and see how they look with the bow before I commit though. If they don't look good I'll work harder on them. The actual implementation really shouldn't take very long. I do need to add a 'chilly' effect to the arrows and bow and a gentle glow, but those things are easy. I do also have to decide on how much of the animation will actually show since this is intended to be quite a fast firing weapon. Here I'll show the animations for air and ground. And I'll say that it's likely they will end up animating significantly faster so they feel 'snappy' and fit into the limited time for the actual bow charge up and fire. And the bowstring bouncing back will only really show if you fire a shot and then just stand there similar to how the melee attacks work.
Also as far as Aria's wingmilk animations, I am going to leave most of them using a generic attack animation and would like to come back later to fix them up. That will also likely be my solution when I start implementing the poundcake form. I do have to create all the boob sizes for it along with all the other animations, but I am going to fast track it and I won't be bothering immediately with making excessive animations. Instead it will start off with all weapons using the generic attack animation except for the butt slam. That will be based directly on the poundcake form itself so shouldn't be a problem.
A creature to which lives in spite of it's head long having been detached due to some unknown sorcery. In Xazelle's case, she rather prefers to put on the airs of a normal woman. One still inhabiting an ancient ruin that is. Of course it's quite obvious by her unusual armor and the fact she's behind a barrier with silencers around that she's not the usual elf one might encounter. This location has remained pilfer free thanks to the deck being stacked in her favor, but Aria coming along with a catalyst and gems might have her in over her head before too long.
Npc of the month for October. I've pivoted on this and will be doing something more blimp related with Xazelle. I did definitely want to have her drop her head into her cleavage, but this is too hard to pass up on.
So the results are in for November and it seems we'll be having a shripe dancer! As I had described them as in the appearance poll, this will mean something of a belly dancer look to them. Puffy leggings and sleeves, probably a veil, pointy cloth shoes, and a bra with a gem in the middle of it. Something like that. I think this sort of tf could really go any way, though I do like the idea of something more geared toward hourglass to emphasize a dance of some kind. Hmmm I wonder if there is some popular dancer I could take inspiration from...
Since this is a shripe dancer, she'll likely have something geared toward the cosmos as her colors. New polls will be up soon since it's the holiday season and I'm just thinking a bit more on how I want to do the appearance poll this time.
Seems the young Mari woman really wanted a nice glass of milk so bad she was willing to drink from a jugg of wingmilk. But as you may guess, there's a good reason that only wizard's should drink it! Though Sildiscia's tail seems pretty strong! Good thing she caught the lamp post before floating off!
Her actual in game implementation will likely be a little bit different like most of the NPCs. I may retool the area she is in slightly to fit her better, but I mostly mean the animation when I say that. Since I am going to be manually coding it. In the animation here it's obviously very manually sprited, but that doesn't translate to the game engine obviously.
Tired today. Sildiscia's animation is effectively done, just applying finishing touches. I may upload her after I wake up. I'm pretty happy with how she came out, though I did save a couple variants with one that had more of an upward facing booba and might use it on a later NPC with BE.
In other news, I've gotten the Shiver Bow's core behavior programmed. I have a very early preview that I'll link here. It still needs quite a few visual adjustments (like the explosion is just a placeholder and so is the lockon indicator). Also need to actually make Aria's bowdraw animations too. Those are in the works and I'll weave them in with the next NPC getting done too.
I decided on making the bow auto-lock on as I said, and I also made it so that when you fire it, the arrows embed into a target and stack up. For now, the damage isn't well adjusted, but the enemies don't get staggered until the explosion occurs. The arrows prioritize creatures, then juggleables (barrels), and finally will targets destructibles. There might be a more elegant solution, but I ended up with this as I didn't want to add another button or button combo for target swapping. I'll, of course, observe it and test it, but until everyone gets it in their hands to play with, I won't know if it's actually comfortable to use.
Also, if it's not obvious, the sound design is... almost non-existent on it. The bowdraw and fire plays instantly because her animation isn't ready (which there will likely be a slight delay to firing when it's all done) and right now the spam of generic damage impacts overwhelms the embed sound. And of course none of the explosion sounds are right and proper. Lots to modify before it's actually done.
Once the visuals and sounds are updated, I'll work on the balance a bit, test it, etc. I do also plan on giving the Shiver Bow and 'infusion' upgrade. I'm not 100% on how I will do it yet, as always, but my plan right now is to make it so that when you cast a spell, it makes your next shot have an infusion based on the spell. For windforce, that will make it so that the target will inflate, for bubble shield it will cause the arrow to destroy any projectiles it comes near, for the star it will just increase the damage slightly (since you can practically spam the star), with the healing spell it will likely make the attack heal you based on the damage done. With phoenix dash, the explosion will cause flames to pour out unless there are issues with that. All of them should have some modifcation to them based on how many arrows you embed into a target.
Speaking of, I have it currently set so that arrows always generate an explosion for testing, but when done, it will be that explosions only occur at 3 or 4 and super explosions happen at 8. Right now, if you hit a target with 8, it will dump the container for the arrows and generate a delayed explosion. So even if you keep shooting arrows into a target, you don't lose any value from them.
In regards to how they function, due to how spammy they are, you will likely find yourself being retaliated against by filimuri frequently. Also I will be adjusting the spread projectile to cause more retaliation aggro too. The more spammy a weapon feels, the more aggro I feel it should generate. Charge cards being a slight exception right now because they do feel a bit weak. I'm going to look at them a bit closer to finishing the patch so I can compare all of the weapons together.
On less noteable details, I fixed up some small issues with filimuri origin points which means other issues may crop up from it. Basically I moved all of their origin points around a bit so that their origins are all centered properly. Now filimuri should behave just a bit better. I think I already said it, but I did the same with the golem. Maybe I didn't. I actually, stupidly, had an elipse hitbox on the golem and previously I fixed that.
Also right now golems 'push you up and away' and I will be changing that. Currently it's too easy to exploit that with phoenix dash and you can bounce off them up and then over them. I actually don't have a problem with you getting over golems with the right tools, but that isn't phoenix dash. Phoenix dash shouldn't be a 'bypass all enemies' spell, though I am fine with it being used to bypass most enemies/obstacles. Just not all of them. The jelly'valay also shouldn't be bypassable except where I added side passages. Of course I did design them in such a way that it shouldn't be an issue.
I've also made a little pump animation for Aria. For right now, it's just a cute little animation, but I am thinking that I may be able to use it for a mini-game involving an NPC which will reveal the map to you for an area (by being pumped up into the sky) or the NPC who adds indicators to a region to tell you how many secrets there are in that area left for you to discover. Shouldn't take much to put in, but I think it will add a lot for something that is otherwise a simple dialogue. I think I will make it a basic 'hold up, then press down' sort of thing. I doubt there will be a way to lose or anything, but hey, it should be fun! (Though now that I've gone and made this animation, I am just thinking about the additional boob sizes and how they will look overtop it. Maybe you should have to pump your power into the girl in order to inflate her. Could always use more uses for symbols right?)
I think that's all to discuss for now! Have a lovely day and take a quick look at the weapon demo video that I linked earlier. Sildiscia's BE should follow after I wake up.
Time has seemed to go rather quick these past couple weeks. I didn't even realize how much I'd spent until I checked what day it was. Well, I have spent the last couple weeks working on the game quite a bit. I added three new rooms that will appear as a side passage for Avlon. You'll need to find a key to get in there and you'll find a few unlockables in there too. And there is a very brief puzzle shrine in there as well more so meant as a quick way to show you that you need to have beaten the 2nd boss in order to get through it than anything.
Aside from those three rooms, I made some adjustments to few NPC dialogues just to make things a little less 'smacking you in the face' with information thanks to advice from patrons. I also fixed several small bugs and adjusted some of the hints for finding unlockables. Also I changed some issues that might cause soft-locking if you're persistent. Now above the Ninestep shrine you may notice a strong breeze that blows you (and any unfortunate gobbo balloons) to one direction. This is really just meant to prevent said soft-locking, but you may also find it entertaining. I'll likely add this in at a few later sections just as a bit of a joke and also to avoid soft locking too.
I've also adjusted the teleporters to be more obvious which ones are active now. And in addition, you'll be able to walk back out of some areas without needing the new unlockable. Of course, once you have the unlockable that allows you to backtrack, you can also backtrack through most other areas too.
Also some seem rather eager to see NPC tfs implemented so I may go ahead and start to add those in small batches once the next build is out, or as part of it.
In regards to the progress into the next build, I've gotten a little work done on the environment and I've been working on the new weapon too. Ran into a small snag with how to program it exactly, but I think I've worked that all out. I'll be starting the animation for that soon, though it probably won't be nearly as complex as the wind blade animation. Just a simple bow draw and fire and an air version. A few of the FX are done for it, but I need to fix them since they use a similar particle system to the phantom blaster and I would like the trail of the arrows have a snowy/frosty feeling to it as well.
In regards to the functionality of it, I finally decided on something more concrete. With the whole supercombine effect being a thing with a minimum required being four and the max being eight. Though as I had said previously, I want to give it a synergy with the wind force spell so after you cast it, your next attack will inflate a target. And yes, for now, that's how it will work. But in the future I was thinking that you would get a duration buff that makes it so your supercombine instead inflates the target and getting a higher value would inflate the target to blimp status, or if you went even higher, to make them pop and damage nearby opponents or even make them inflate too.
Of course, as I said before, that's something requiring a lot more sprite work and animation. If I do do that, it will likely end up being somewhat specific as recommended to me by a patron. Example being that gobbos become blimps in the second inflation state and filimuri booba just get even more huge. So depending on the enemy, they inflate differently.
But for now, I am going to keep working on just getting the basic implementation down with the explosion effect, then work toward the infusion, and then if things go well, maybe I'll add the extra inflation and bursting. Though it's more likely I will add more Aria stuff first before that. I'd say don't expect to see it before the next build comes out bare minimum. Just a fun idea for now.
Anyway, sorry I don't have more to show. Sildiscia's inflation is in the works. I'll go ahead and show her portrait as I reworked it.
I've also slightly changed her clothing/armor too. Though she will still be covered up when her booba go 'fwoompf!'.
The poll results are in for October and we'll be having a Dullahan elf! As we all know, Dullahan are somewhat armored and they have detachable heads. In this case I'd like to do some kind of gag involving her head so it'll likely end up booba related! Next NPC polls will be up soon!
What's the quickest way to get a boost? Potions of course! Probably from your local wolf alchemist too. Though you can't always trust the potion to do exactly what you want. Sometimes it'll give you a boost that you're not expecting!
Queenie's TF. Hips and thighs focused, but added a little bit of boob and belly too. Also have one without the belly just in case. No bg versions too! (You might have to download the file to get it to pause at the end. No clue why that final frame just cuts off in the preview)
I've completed the remaining work on the wind blade rework. I think, maybe, the only thing that feels unfinished about it would be the parry SFX. It has one, but ehn, I feel like it could be better so I'll likely find abetter sound to use, but that's really it.
In the last devlog I talked about what would be done with it and now I've gone ahead and finished it all up. I added a new 'parry' to it, but it really only applies to larger enemy types. In this case, that's just the golem enemies and the gargoyle. The jelly valay doesn't really have anything parryable and none of the filimuri really have anything to parry. (And piken you can break their pikes so no need to parry them). There will be a new large enemy type you can parry in the coming update though. As well, at least one part of the boss will have a move that can be parried, but otherwise it's just a very niche feature. But it is there specifically to make the wind blade weapon feel more viable against those bigger enemies.
I've put together a little video to showcase how it can be used and also just showing the weapon in action too.
As you can see in the video, there is a little 'spark' that appears on the first swing of the blade. That's the parry window. It only shows up on the first swing in the combo, so if you are trying to parry, you will have to use only the first swing. I did make sure that a successful parry created a good opening though! For the golem, you can only parry the wind up overhead punch attack. For the gargoyle, you can parry her charge and her melee attacks. However, you have to parry 'both' her melee attacks in a row if you want to stun her. Otherwise you just deter the attack. (Also, you cannot parry boobs in any way shape or form)
Also, this new parry will not come standard. You'll need to find the 'parry' technique. Fortunately it's located right on the main road of the Ninestep Mountains right before the second golem enemy.
As well, I've removed the ability to destroy projectiles and put it on the wind cutter technique unlockable which is impossible to miss in Bristle Field.
But if you are already at Kirzimi Inn, then fear not. I have also put both techniques downstairs on top of books. They're easy to spot!
Wind Cutter Technique
Parry Sense Technique
Now if they are right at the start of the game and impossible to miss, why would I take them away and give them back as unlockables? Well, very simply put, I wanted the details to feel more important. Right now I don't even have a tutorial for the weapons and I feel like if I dump a ton of information on the player that they'll gloss over it. Instead I put them on the collectables so now they will feel more important and the details are less likely to be lost.
Yes this is a form of yellow paint, but there are two reasons yellow paint exist. One of those is because it lets developers get away with bad level design and the second reason is for those who pay a lot less attention to the details of a game. Which of these is the case for this decision? I don't know honestly.
In other news, I've started work on the frost bow weapon, but haven't really gotten far yet. I'm still mixed on the ideas I have for it and also the design itself. I am thinking that I would like the arrows to follow you similar to how grahsts do and have the arrows have a gentle glow and also a small particle effect of fog to make it look chilled. The arrows themselves feel like they should just be 1 pixel wide lines though and I'm still debating on whether I should have that or actual arrows. But they're not really holding me up. What's actually holding me up is deciding on the actual animation. I have been thinking that I should make it a dynamic weapon where if you are standing on the ground, there is a brief charge up and then you can fire arrows very rapidly until you want to move again and the arrows just don't stun. So you fire them rapidly and once they hit the 'explosion' threshold, they explode doing a buncha damage and stunning in a small AOE. Then while you're in the air, you can freely fire the arrows, but only a certain amount before you need to land. And I'd like to keep the 'slowfall' effect of previous attacks.
But in order to have that mobility, you'd have to have a weak attack I feel and that would make it feel less effective, stiff, or clunky to use. But I have settled though and instead of going for a 'charge up' like the charge cards, I'm going to make it an auto charge. Instead of holding the button down, you gradually recover arrows. When next you fire the bow, it launches all of your current arrows in a spread that attempt to lock onto enemies. If you spam it, you can still keep attacking, but extra attacks will be less effective. You'll still cause a combined explosion on the enemy once they have enough arrows in them though! I think this will be the best choice and I'll be working toward that. It should allow for you to be mobile and not have to have the hassle of holding down the button all the time.
Aside from that, I've made some smaller changes to things. The golem enemy used to have an oval hitbox and I decided to just make it a normal one due to some issues with the golem getting stuck when parried over edges. As well the golem should now not go over any ledges. (Well shouldn't fall off them) There were some minor changes and additions. Fixes to the environment like light sources being added, correcting some tiles that were on the wrong layer, etc.
I also spent a couple of days getting the ability to compile a linux version of the game. Using a raspberry pi 4 I got for xmas a couple years back, I installed Ubuntu on it and figured out how to properly connect to it. There was some tshooting to do, but it didn't take too long to do. Thankfully Game Maker supports compiling to a few different platforms with some configuration. So next update I'll also compile a linux version for anyone who would like that! (Though there are a couple small issues with it. I think a few of the outline shaders don't work on it and possibly other issues I didn't spot while testing it. I'll have to look into fixing any issues I find, but it's hard to est on the raspberry pi system as it doesn't have enough power to easily run the game. If I can get my hands on another laptop, or if I finally get to messing with some spare computer parts I have, I'll try and install Ubuntu on another system and test it properly.)
I've also finished Queenie's TF completely and I'll be posting her shortly! And I have some fan art to share as well as some more art of my own too!
Not much else to really say though.
Oh I had forgot to mention swapping over to a newer IDE in game maker and converting the project. No issues doing so, but I'm not so sure about the performance of the new Game Maker especially in the room editor. Just a bit of a strange change with how I went from using Game Maker Studio 2 the app to just 'Game Maker' which is a newer version and uses a different app id on steam. It's just odd, but otherwise things are fine and dandy!
Little later than usual, but been up too long and ready to call it quits on what I'm working on for the day and that means doing the devlog too!
The quickest thing to talk about is just reminding that Queenie's base sprite and portrait are done as shown in a previous post. I'll be working on her tf soon I promise.
Before talking about the melee rework, I'll talk about something I'm playing with atm. I've long since been considering changing the weapon/spell pickup system so that when you pick one up, you drop your old one. I've avoided doing this not because I had not thought of it. On the contrary, I've been aware of this sort of thing since my childhood and playing games like Super Ghouls and Ghosts. That sort of game though if you even touched a weapon you would automatically pick it up. So there was an added layer of challenge to avoid picking up a weapon you didn't want.
Originally, before any actual version of Aria's Dreamland released, touching weapon pickups automatically picked them up. Though the couple people I had test that little snippet of a preview didn't like it at all so I swapped to using a button to pick it up. However I intentionally avoided having you drop your old one since I wanted to avoid any kind of possible abuse that might occur as a result of that. Back during that time though it was possible to exploit spells by casting a high cost one, then picking up a low cost spell. So if you could just pick up a spell and put it back down then you'd be able to do that repeatedly. I don't know when you'd ever be in a situation like that, but I still worried about it.
As well, I did want to force the player to keep a new spell because I worried that they would pick up the spell, decide they didn't like it, then drop it right before a screen change into a shrine that they needed the spell for. The bubble spell, for example, is a screen before the shrine. So if I make this change, then that means I'll also have to move the spell to sit right in front of the shrine. Which uh... well why not right? How else can I make it any clearer that you can use the spell for that?
I guess I'll need to adjust a few others too then. Also the old spot it occupied will need something else in it's place so I guess I'll put in a few extra pieces of gold candy. I'd be curious about everyone's thoughts on this especially after everyone gets a chance to try it out. Is it a bad idea or a good idea? For me, I am just very used to games being punishing so I often forget that others may not really like hard stuff. Here's a little showing of it in action. (Gotta add a little sfx to pickup so the player knows they actually picked it up/dropped the old one)
The next thing to talk about is the melee rework. Due to extra complexity, this took quite a while and I'm still not even 100% happy about all the balance surrounding it and whatnot. I have to do some recoloring for the blade trail and I am still thinking I should add new sfx to it.
As I said, it's now a 3 hit combo. I also increased the damage and adjusted it. The first two hits of the combo do half the damage of the third swing. (Air swings always do half damage) The third swing now does about 25% more damage than it previously did. As well, the delay has been made uniformly 30 frames instead of 35 > 32. But with the combo system, there's a reduction in 10 frames if you q up for the next hit in a combo. So instead of 90 frames spent on the melee combo, it's 70 max and the way combo queuing works means it's consistently 70 frames unless you intentionally delay it. Previously it was 32 per swing at highest power level. So roughly 96 frames if you hit every swing perfectly timed. (It likely would take longer)
The only disadvantages to the new system are you do not get any air hover, you do not destroy armor instantly now, (a flat 1.4* multiplier is added to damage against armor) and individual swings at higher power is weaker by about 25% (Though this is negligible when you have the upgrades). The wind ring damage bonus was doubled as well.
You still destroy enemy weapons and projectiles all the same. (Though the hitbox on the blade itself will likely need to be adjusted) Also the wind blade no longer instantly does damage the moment you press the button and it waits a moment for the animation to actually reach the point where the blade is coming out to hit. I also have the slight worry about comboing being too easy and the player continues the combo without intending to and gets stuck in the attack animation. I'll address that if it feels like it's a problem.
Ah but as I was working on melee, it was honestly most difficult just getting all the booba sizes properly placed and aligned. I had to make a quick paperdoll stand in so I could examine them in action at a slow speed and verify they were right and good. That honestly took a lot of the time. Just tedious work to make sure things were how they were supposed to be. But that's just kind of how it is for this sort of thing. The booba must be placed perfectly. It is required.
You can see the paperdoll here floating in the air. The melee is still really buggy here and doesn't properly play the animation. It took quite a while to get it all sorted. The animation here is really heavily customized. In the end, it starts off very fast and later slows slightly and then again slows slightly a second time. Then, when the combo is actually over, it continues to play the rest of the animation even after. So long as you don't move or attack again of course. Here's the animation finished as well as a booba version to show why it slows down toward the end.
If you look closely, you can see an extra anim type in there. When falling and attacking while airborne, if you touch the ground, it swaps to a different sprite that is 'standing'. That way falling while attacking doesn't look strange if you touch the ground.
Lastly, I worked a little on the idle animations system, but didn't get much done. Instead have a new 'landing' animation that plays if you aren't moving horizontally at all. A straight up and down jump or landing without any speed will trigger it.
And, why not, have a really goofy bug that occurred while I was trying to get this to work.
Overall, very productive for all of it, but I could've been more productive if I hadn't gotten sick for a few days. I'm all better now. I had thought that I was getting sick again due to a cough, but it passed. I think!
While talimari are considered the most abundant of their species on Neivaun, they are only one subspecies of mari. There are several kinds, each one based off certain native animals. Carimari, bachimari, and yarimari to name a few. As well, mixed breeds are referred to as urimari. The prefix of each being the animal they were created based on.
Queenie, while not a talimari, still feels the natural draw of magic, but has a stronger natural affinity for physical combat. The mixture resulting in her becoming a spellsword. And while all but the most inadequate wizards can cast a wide range of magical spells, some more specialized magic that Queenie has found herself interested in may be a little out of reach. In her attempts to properly control these blessings spells, she might find herself overburdened with the weight of its effects. Or maybe it will result in a strange new weapon for her to use.
So while I have always sort of had the idea that talimari were just one race of a 'mari' species, I never committed to it. The reason being that I wasn't sure if talimari were just going to be elves with animal blended in with them to make them significantly more powerful wizards or if they would be their own thing. (To build off the mutative nature of a certain element in the world) Well, I'm going to go ahead with the latter idea and give them the room as a species to have more variety of appearances and function. So while talimari remain the defacto 'wizard' race, some of their subspecies can have a little more gearing toward other professions. (Though they all still have a natural draw toward magic)
Since this time we only had one entry, I'll be skipping the voting process and Sildiscia will be the next one to get a tf! Since it was requested, she'll be getting some very large BE, probably a bit similar to Nokah. I have planned to go back to Nokah and make hers heavier, but just very busy right now. I did finish up all the alt boob sprites for the main melee combo, so now I'm just integrating it all. But the NPC for the prior month will be coming soon! Then Sildiscia will get hers.
Right now I am really quite disorganized due to some issues. I'm house sitting atm and also my pc has sprung a leak. (I didn't choose to watercool my pc, it's a hand me down) Thankfully it's a very minor one and it's all handled for the time being. I'm still able to work in spite of this, just a little less productively. In a week or so everything will be sorted out.
On the game dev side of things, the melee rework is progressing well. The actual in game code is effectively done as far as actually using it goes. I still need to adjust how it works and the damage values, etc, but overall it functions. As well the air attack no longer 'pauses' you so it flows freely with you able to full control it. I plan to:
-Lower the damage per hit slightly with the first couple hits doing less damage, then the final hit doing significantly more. -Attacks will no longer break armor and instead just do more damage to armor. You will be able to find an upgrade which will make the third hit break armor as it used to do though. (Air attacks will not be able to instantly break armor) -Fix up air swing animation -Add new SFX
Currently like I said things are pretty disorganized. It's kind of like I have a lot of parts laid out, but not a lot to show that looks fully complete. With that said, I do have the new melee animation fairly done. I'll probably adjust it a bit more, especially when I finish the boob sizes that go with, but yeah.
It does need some more adjustments here and there, and I am a bit worried how it will look with the bigger booba sizes, but this is how it looks in general for the time being. I haven't yet done the air swing yet, but that will end up much easier to do since it will just be her falling sprite with a simple swing animation. (Working through the booba sizes on this first)
In addition to this animation, I put together a quick idle animation as well. Then I got a little too into it and went ahead and did all the booba sizes for it too. Which that is something I will say about making a ton of sprites. Every time I add a new one, I have to add new booba sizes to them and fit them onto Aria's sprite. For the idle animation it just took me two-three hours for all of them, but for the melee animation it's taking significantly longer since I have to go in and adjust it. Just look at the animation and tell me how you think she can make those movements with big, hulking melons? I went for her swinging 'under' her breasts during the first swing, then the second her breasts get squished to the side, and lastly it's more of a side profile shot which I am still working on. I could just steal the more 'backward' facing breasts from phoenix dash, but I don't know if that would look so good. They will probably end up being mostly side facing.
Anyway, here is her idle and a little treat of one of her other boob sizes.
I'm still debating whether I will have this just be how she stands around when you aren't pressing any buttons or if she should be stationary how she is now, then occasionally run through a choice of a few idle animations or what. At the really huge booba sizes will it look more natural for her to stand still or have a little up and down like she's ready to go?
I have done some other animation work too, but I'm not yet ready to reveal that since I'm still not 100% on it.
This is most of what I've been doing. There were some other minor adjustments to the game, but nothing worth noting.
After I finish the melee rework I'll promptly get on the NPC of the month, then come back and continue working on other things.
With the results in, we'll have another month of existing NPC tf voting. Like the previous month, 5$ and 10$ patrons will be able to make suggestions since they also voted on this option. Just like last time, I will take all the suggestions, then if they exceed 5, I will put them into a randomizer and pick 5 randomly using it. Then I will create a poll with those 5 options for the same tiers to vote on.
Another post will be added shortly where you can post your NPC suggestion.
A couple more weeks and now we're at another progress update. These last couple of weeks have been a mix of under the hood stuff, preparation, and just general additions to get the ball rolling into the next update. Also finished Galitoray's TF and I'll start on the winner of last month soon too.
To begin with, I'll start by talking about the easiest to really discuss and that's the small bundle of new unlockables going into the game. While they won't all be available with 0.6, most of them are
Circlets
Between these two, you may recognize one of them. The one with a crystal is the peace circlet and it removes your passive energy drain, but not the energy drain you experience from movement.
Anklets
These anklets cut off 33% of the energy drain you receive from moving around each. With all three, it removes the energy drain from movement completely. As you can imagine, to completely remove the energy drain, you'll need all three and also the peace Circlet. The copper anklet will be added to Shopia with the next patch and you should be able to purchase it as soon as you reach Kirizmi (or right away if you are already there.)
Tiwold's Broken Shackle
Probably the most asked for feature so far, this simple looking item will allow you to go backward in rooms for about 70% of rooms. There are still quite a few which you cannot go back after you go forward. Example being rooms where it's a one way like the blueberry detector passages. Though some which take you into shrines or caves or beyond laser walls sometimes are one way. An example of a one way trip is the shrine in Emar forest. Due to the relative safety and the bonus golden candy there, I decided to make it a one way trip. You can, of course, always go back around again if you have the means, though the time spent doing so I think is acceptable.
Twin Spheres
This item will cause your Magic Orb attack to be replicated as a weaker shadow variant that has it's gravity reversed. Right now it does 50% of the damage of your attack. One orb is good, but who doesn't like a couple of round spheres? I had to do some stat modification to get this, and other things, to work properly, see below after the items section.
Mana Retainers
These are straightforward; For each of these you have when you die, you'll respawn with that amount of mana on your person. Limited by your max mana of course!
Grahstering
Grahsterings are nothing new. I believe there are two currently in the game, though all of these are actually programmed. I just have to put them down. I'll just give a quick overview of each one real quick.
Toraz - Makes the yellow whirly grahst do more damage.
Kyrakyst - Makes the purple punchy one do significantly more damage to enemy block.
Silfire - Makes the blue wispy grahst explode at the end of his path. (NYI)
Zerkawn - Makes the teal mourn grahst do additional damage to armored opponents. (NYI)
Rasper - Makes the red chompy grahst give the player some energy when it does damage.
Grahster-earring
Decided to be silly and continue the trend of this naming with earrings. These will be more impactful versions of the rings however.
Toraz - The yellow whirly grahst attempts to bounce into enemies after each bounce.
Kyrakyst - Undecided on what this one will do unfortunately. Will modify the purple punchy grahst though.(NYI)
Silfire - The blue wispy grahst will slightly push back opponents it passes through. (NYI)
Zerkawn - The teal mourn grahst will 'target' every enemy it passes through, dealing some damage to them after it deploys. (NYI)
Rasper - Makes the red chompy grahst 'jump' to a new target after it's current target dies. This costs it one charge of 'bite' when it does so though so if you have a grahst with one bite left, it will just evaporate instead. (If you have read previous devlogs, you'll know that there will be at least one more ring for the chompy grahst)
There are quite a lot of grahstery items to modify the large number of projectiles so I went with the easy solution of making the items similar to one another. Considering how other weapons function and their power, I feel like it's appropriate to be a little samey with the item design itself. With that said, the next item gets to be a little more unique.
Onyx Opal Grahstering
An ominous ring of opal and onyx. This one unlocks the Omen grahst for your grahstery. He very rarely randomly spawns in place of a normal grahst. When you are under max weapon power, his chances to spawn are significantly increased. If you have one loaded up already, then another shouldn't spawn in.
His functionality is simple; He traces an instant line between you and the direction you're facing, impacting the next thing in line. His range is decently long, but he is most notable for doing a massive chunk of damage to a single target.
Now that we discussed the items, it's time to discuss a few changes I made to the weapons systems. As it currently is in the game, most attacks will cause the target to become 'invincible' after being hit. The spread weapon is an exception to this. For the most part this kind of worked out, but I had noticed some issues with doing damage to enemies with the grahstery. As it turned out, you could run in and kind of 'flood' an enemy with attacks and quite a few of them just wouldn't register due to the enemies becoming damage immune.
I noticed this while testing out the new Omen grahst where I would throw a punchy grahst and then an omen and the omen wouldn't even hit. So I checked other forms of damage and lo and behold, yeah, sometimes damage wouldn't register. It all culminated in seeing damage not even hit an enemy while the magic star was in play causing it to be largely ineffective.
So as a result I went ahead and categorized the types of damage and invincible states to mix damaging attacks better. Now sticking five chompys onto a target will result in five chompys worth of damage. Though there are still 'some' damaging attacks which are affected by invincibility. As well, mourn's beam needs some attention that I haven't fully given it yet.
Before this change, the magic orb would hit a target, make it invincible, then the explosion would not hit the target (intentional). Now the orb hits the target and makes it invincible ONLY to AOE damage. So the damage from the direct impact of the orb will be applied, but the damage from a potentially airborne magstar should also be able to be applied too.
I have a few damage types for this and I reserve the 'fully invincible' flag for enemies who are intentionally making themselves invincible (golems using their shield) and potentially for things the player can do to enemies that needs them to be invincible for.
I keep thinking that I am done with systems only to find myself coming back to them. A small thing I also changed as an experiment was how the charge card (and omen) lighting effects work. As it currently is, the lighting just 'vanishes'. Though now the charge card and omen will have 'fading' added to them.
In the roadmap I have 'refining the lighting system' in there, but this simply could not wait because of the omen impact being invisible without a lingering light and I was just annoyed by the way it just cut out. I noted it was happening on the charge cards and really pretty much all temporary light sources. For now I'm just going to let it go, but when I come back to the lighting system later I will most definitely revamp it to have a lot more fading for all temporary light sources that I can remember.
For the time being this is all I can remember that I worked on. There was more but the what escapes me currently. Now then, I'm going to continue to work on things. I'm thinking that soon I will start work on revamping the wind blade weapon as I have said and/or working on the new weapon. Which I've been thinking about the new weapon a bit and wondering on the implementation. I would think that I am making a failure of a weapon right away, but the next area the enemies I want to add should make the weapon feel stronger. Yet I will keep working at it until it has an identity of its own and feels strong enough. The wind blade I think should be comparatively easy to work with. Though I am going to have to add a few new animations to Aria, but they will be on the short side.
The inhabitants of candimus seem to quite enjoy playing pranks on one another. In this case, a gobbo does so with Galitoray turning her into a rather massive snek balloon. Of course the gobbo loses her balance before flopping off the ledge into some cocoa.
In the actual game, the scenery will be where Galitoray is located and animate properly of course having a splash for the gobbo and mug as well. But here it's just showing how it will look. I've also included a clean version with just Galitoray and the gobbo who inflates her!
I hope everyone enjoys the animation! The next lady will be much less complex than this though and mostly focused on some thighs and hips!
Last couple of weeks were slow for my productivity, but I did get ven'drothe done as shown and I'm about 60-70% of the way through Galitoray's animation. Once she's done, I'll be doing a mix of game art and working on the NPC of the month that won, a talimari spellsword. I'm going to give her more of a basic animation so that way I can get more full steam ahead into the next patch.
As far as actual work done on the game itself, not a ton, though I did go ahead and add something I'd been planning to for a while. very early in development I made Illaria's home and up until now the access to those rooms has been cut off. I've had all the necessary items added to the game that will unlock these rooms, though only a couple of them are actually IN GAME in the current patch. (Not yet available to the public) There will only be a few items needed and you don't need to get them in any order, to gain access to all the current rooms, but they'll be spread across the game and be very well hidden.
Which really these extra rooms are just small aesthetic things and give you a little more information about Illaria herself. Just a little extra for those who like hunting things down and really exploring the game, but not something you have to worry about while you're playing the game. There is no extra bonuses when you get them, just the extra rooms to have a look at.
Here's a little snip of one of the rooms:
~Illaria's library
In reality, since I made these rooms so early in development, they're kind of underdeveloped too and feel a bit empty. I tried to fix them up just a bit, but ehn, they could use more work. I'm not really that happy with them especially since they don't have any lighting to them either so no atmosphere or anything like that. And the sprite work isn't great either because I was still working on the style of the game... just overall right now they aren't that much of a reward and I'll spend some time later to spruce them up. Plus if there is interest for it, I could add a bit of access to some of Milan's home too, but for now, I don't think it's that important to the actual fun of the game so I'm not worried about it.
Really I just want to get to work on the newest stuff and start filling out the next area, making sprites for it, and also programming it. There's quite a lot of stuff to be done with this patch! While Kirizimi had a lot of places to explore, this next patch will be more of an emphasis on more mechanically interesting things. A new weapon, a new spell, a rework to wind blade, a new enemy, at least one new form (I may push back the poundcake form to next patch), and then the boss. Well, the next update will be everything before the boss, but then the boss will be immediately after that. (After a intermission area) There's just a lot to get done and I'm eager to get on it. Just need to finish making Galitoray blimp!
I have also gotten the music to the new area and the boss music too, but I am going to keep the boss music to myself until I'm actually working on her. After this devlog I'll upload the next Area's music if you'd like to listen to it. This music was done by my usual musician, but the boss music I tried another musician that I was curious about so we'll see if everyone likes that music.
Speaking of, the music for the secret boss currently in the game is a licensed track from Ovani. So is the music in Dizzy's manor just in case anyone was curious. I do tend to like to hire musicians for custom stuff, but I listen to the music that I get the licenses to via humble bundle and these couple times I just loved them and really wanted to use them. The secret boss specifically came about because I liked the track so much, but I did kinda clip the track up a bit because I didn't fully agree with one of the instruments in it. I don't think I did a very good job though so sorry if you're like a sound mixer and you can hear the song loop.
The poll results are in and this month's NPC will be a talimari spellsword. It's likely that I'll aim for something of a subrace for her. Possibly with some floppy bunny ears. I will also likely give her the hourglass treatment with a bottom heavy emphasis. The last couple NPCs have been somewhat draining so I'm steering away from more complex transformations for a bit so that way I can focus more on the next version! The next polls will be up soon!
So Ven'drothe won the NPC tf poll from last month and is the first NPC in the game to receive two possible tfs. (Well technically that would be Licorice, but this would be the first where she won twice). In this case it looks like Ven'drothe is struggling to get a hold of her new abilities and hasn't quite gotten down breathing fire yet. Seems instead all the extra hot air is inflating her. Every bit of her from ears to horns to tail and even her wings!
I put in extra effort to enhance this one. All the extra little pumped up bits of her and the blaze inside her stomach. Really the hard part was doing the fire inside her as that's something I've never done before. Hopefully everyone enjoys it! I uploaded a few versions too just in case you're not a fan of one. In game though I think I will use the fiery version where she stays inflated, then if you revert her, her ears/horns/wings stay inflated. I'll try and program her fire to also emit a light source too. But we'll see how the NPC tf system goes.
I've pretty much finished up ven'drothe's second tf and I'll be uploading it today. Then next up will be Galitoray who will be getting blimped as well. Blimping takes quite a lot out of me so the NPC of the month next month (and probably the month after that) is going to be more on the less huge side. I am thinking with how the poll is looking that I'll likely make it a nice thick hourglass shape!
As far as actual game devving, I've started into the next area. I did the exit area of Kirizimi and I've designed a room for the Khilspere forest.
As I had said in the roadmap, there will be a few that are mostly recolors. Khilspere is one of those. While it will have some unique elements to it, this is the general look you can expect from it. None of the enemies are in yet, but you can certainly look forward to a few more basic types and at least one new big type enemy. As well, the next boss will be in this update, but mostly keeping a lid on her.
Though really not much else to say at this point, just working and hopefully there will be something more substantial to show soon considering just how much will be packed into this version.
Here is how the main menu banner looks. Highlight will make her chest swell up a little. Mousing away and it deflates. Click and hold and it swells up to max big. Release, or mouse away, and she wobbles. After that the logos pop up. Clicking and holding on Silver after that will cause her to gently squeeze her bosom. Right click and Silver will deflate back to normal.
The past couple weeks have been a bit hectic and anxiety inducing, but everything got done and now feels like it's settling.
The first thing I did was finish up Nokah. Though I am going to work on a slightly different alternate where her booba are weightier so I might add that one to her post without notifying just as a heads up. It'll be more like she flops down on her chest and blows up to the size currently shown type of thing.
The second thing was that I got a discord set up. If you're a paid patron you can have access by simply connecting your discord to Patreon. If you decide to cancel, I don't think you are removed from the discord either, but you will lose access to the Patreon only channels and you will not be able to talk. You'll still be able to see general chat though and the most common updates. Now that everything on that front is done I feel much better about having opened the discord up and I'm a lot less anxious about how it's gone. I thought it would require way more maintenance than it seems to so far. Though some of that is very much thanks in part to a good friend Skyla.
The third thing that got finished was an updated demo. Now there are a lot of QoL changes in the demo such as the stairs, coyote time, the map, and some bugfixes. As well there's some new content such as the first boss/bosses and some new unlockables. I also added in a silly little main menu clickable. I'll upload the video of that for those who are not on the discord after I'm done this devlog.
Finally, I updated the main branch of the game. It's only a few small changes and some bugfixes, but it's still done just in case you want to play the game for any reason and had an old version. Check the builds collection to quickly jump to it.
There is also the ongoing poll for the NPC to receive a TF this month and it's looking like Galitoray might be the winner, but it's close. In regards to NPC tfs to do still, Ven'drothe blimp will be coming up. After that, the winner of the poll will be done, and then, at last, we'll be back on course to working on the next patch! 0.6.0.0! This will include a new boss, area, some new enemies, a new weapon, a new powerup, probably a new powerdown, and probably a new spell too. Quite a lot to be packed into this one! Though it will mostly be a lot of programming and animation/design stuff. There will only be one new level, but it will likely be jam packed full of new stuff. The build after that one will be spent mostly just fleshing out the new ideas that come in this patch and so on.
~Reverse Windforce Artifact~
~Special idle animation for this form~
Wind Cutter Technique
Parry Sense Technique
Circlets
Anklets
Tiwold's Broken Shackle
Twin Spheres
Mana Retainers
Grahstering
Grahster-earring
Onyx Opal Grahstering
