Those blessed in the womb by a dragon can expect that one day they will undergo their first transformation when the power within them wells up enough to be used. Though already an adult, Ven'drothe is experiencing her first transformation in a rather dramatic fashion. Fortunately for her, her breasts have swollen up to balance out that huge tail of hers! Later she'll be able to conceal this of course by transforming back to normal, but whenever she wishes to use her powers, she'll need to transform into her wyrmkin form! (Which is definitely making her panicked and not sure what to do with such immense mammaries)
Sorry everyone... I couldn't help but to spend extra time on this. I know I said I was going to try and make this month short and sweet, but I just kinda got into it and suddenly I was drawing her tail and wings bursting out and yeah. I hope that the extra time spent makes it better and not seem like a waste of time!
I also did a few extra variants here to let you see closer. I also did a silly jiggly version and I hope you like it! Be careful that you're not seduced by her jiggly boobs.
I do still have even one more comm to do, but otherwise I will be spending my time on the filimuri enemies.
In ages past, the a'garians were once elves. Displaced by a great war, they found a home among the southern continent's wastelands. As was their misfortunate, they happened too close to a space where godlike energy had made touchdown to create the dvari. Although most survived, they were mutated and mixed with the genetics of Neivaun's blood, giving them a touch of draconic mutations that were not always pleasant to behold and lowered their survivability.
With the gods perceived as the cause of their woes twice, they turned to the planet's natives for assistance. Though initially rejected, the native dragons saw an opportunity to twist the god's creations against them by absorbing dying a'garian's into their blood pools.
Eventually this led to the dragon's being able to manipulate a'garian offspring before being born into less mutated offspring which would be born as wyrmkin to develop transformative abilities. Now seeing a path for salvation, many of the a'garian people have developed worship for these native dragons and seek their blessings to hopefully avoid the mutations they endure without ever realizing they are being manipulated.
Ven'drothe is what one could consider a typical a'garian. At least, typical before her draconic transformation. A'garians frequently sport horns, scales, thick eyebrows, glowing eyes, black sclera, charcoal skin, and pale hair. Debilitating mutations are rare and more often internal, though uneven amounts of horns, placement, etc are all not so uncommon. They are also quite tall, standing at an average of slightly more than seven feet in height. They still frequently hold the same beauty of their ancient selves simply at a new angle.
A'garia resides near the southern wastelands and deserts adjacent to a mountain range where the dvari live. They are in an alliance with the dvari and a few other races.
Most a'garians are hostile toward the gods and sympathetic towards the natives. (Though there is a big caveat to this in regards to a certain specific kind of native known as the emnei and their thay'valay allies)
With elf winning the last one, I'll exclude it from the poll. I'm going to hold off for another month before returning talimari to the options. Just to increase potential variety a bit more.
The NPC for last month. Still working on her a bit, but this is generally how she'll look. I just have to animate her now and give her a portrait. Just wanted to give an update though since I'm running late on her.
Well this month's poll has ended and the next month will be an elf succubus. I actually already have in mind an idea for her general looks. Likely something more black and purple. I'm still working on last month's NPC, though I'll go ahead and upload what he sprite looks like. I just have to give her a portrait and then animate her. For the elf succubus though I am not 100% sure what to go with just yet. Considering that they are commonly associated with being sexy, I have two main ideas. One being that she normally looks small and like a bookworm and then tfs into a big curvy demon lady. The second being more of an unwilling tf where she tries to hone in on tfing herself to fit a target's desires and it surprises her as her belly swells up in addition to her curves.
I'll figure it out. Right now I need to pump up a dragon girl.
A little display of the new enemy type fatty ratty and the pufferfish hazard! Fatty ratty will try and steal whatever your current spell is. If you don't have one, he'll steal golden candy! Catch him fast enough and you can get your stuff back. Sometimes he'll drop additional loot too!
The pufferfish is a neutral creature which you cannot hurt. He won't do any damage to you unless you use the inflation spell on him! If you do that then you'll need to watch out for his spines!
This is quite a late devlog, though believe me, I wanted to post this one up hours ago, but I didn't want to give up on finishing fatty ratty and pufferfish.
What actually happened here was one problem and one addition.
With the pufferfish, I had the issue where the wind force (inflation) spell would only target him when I had him set to a creature parent. Of course I programmed it this way specifically so that you wouldn't have it accidentally failing to inflate things like boxes. Anything that you can inflate is technically a creature that you can kill/destroy. (Balloons included)
Now I do have some extra variables set for just this sort of thing, but the problem arose in 'other' things. Example being that the blaster weapon tracks creature parents. In that case, that's something I really couldn't narrow down easily without either creating a blaster filter list or creating another dedicated creature parent for blaster only targets.
Fortunately the actual code I use for targeting inflatable things was pretty easy to modify. I simply created a new parent for inflatable things that aren't creatures and then added that new parent to the list of inflatable targets. Which will be beneficial in the long run if I want to have things that aren't enemies that you can inflate. (I do want that)
So that was solved.
The next thing that kept me working was just the raw programming on fatty ratty himself. At first I planned on having him just run away from the player until he was inevitably killed or fell off a cliff, but that felt too cheap of an idea and I don't want to make it so you're punished for my own bad AI when they fall of a cliff. That would be the wrong type of annoying.
With a friend's suggestion, I actually went ahead and created a whole animation of him pulling out a 'hole' ala old cartoons which he slaps on the ground and then jumps into.
Which is what caused me to take a LOT of extra time programming him. Putting it all into sequence so it looked right and some of the things that hung me up was my own overlooking. Especially having him 'jump' up into a spot away from the player. It was a situation where I kept looking over the code and the actual solution was just a simple change from max to min basically.
I should also note that he does not really have dynamic hiding after her steals your stuff. I did not want it like the archers because I didn't want him to accidentally jump some place out of reach. Instead, I have to manually set the place he'll run off to in before trying to escape.
Which I think is the better option in this case since it lets me put his destination far away if I want the player to run a long distance instead of just jumping up after him as you will see in the little video I put up of him. As with everything I do, he requires more testing. I'll also be adding him into the forest area as I had always intended him to show up there first.
I will also likely add more difficult versions of him down the line too of course.
I'm also going to upload a close up animation I made of him during the animation process before I separated the parts into sprites to be programmed in.
Another nice thing I went ahead and programmed in was 'flying loot' as you can see in the video. I think at some point I will likely go back and redo treasure chests/crates so that they 'burst' with loot when you destroy them. The exception being floating crates in certain areas which are specifically made to float so you can actually get the loot.
I'm also in a bit of a pinch to make the NPC of the month, though I will be working on her immediately over the next few days to get her ready to go. I already have an idea for what she'll look like and as I said, I will likely do a fairly straightforward BE animation for her.
Only other thing to really discuss now is just that I'm doing fairly well and the comms have help keep me afloat as I said before. I'm hoping that the next couple weeks I can go ahead and create the filimuri enemy types. (And their booba inflation)
Here is a brief video showing the new charge cards weapon as well as the heal spell in action. It is used directly in action too so you get to see a good use of it! I'm trying to think of something to name the heal spell. Not going to just call it 'heal' but something like rejuvenation.
I didn't say it in the devlog, but the particle effects on charge cards I'm really happy with. I've been slowly understanding particle systems more and pushing more FX onto particle systems will lower the load on the CPU making it possible to play the game on older systems. I don't know if I had mention it yet, but I have an old Windows 8 laptop I test on. If the game can run on that, then I consider it running pretty decently. That laptop is in rather bad shape too. My only regret with the game so far is that I didn't understand what delta time was. So whenever the game lags, it slows down. However, since this is just a singleplayer game, that will be fine and maybe even preferable vs frame skipping.
With that said, I'm always on the look out to optimize the game. As of right now, the leaf and rain effects are the two effects that hit performance the most.
Another reason I'm happy with it is that it reminds me of Legacy of Kain's simple particle effects and I am rather fond of that game. Though I know a lot of games use this style of particle effect too.
I have been quite busy working on commissions to make ends meet and so far I've been fairly successful. Things are going well enough in spite of some personal events which happened over the past week, though they didn't have a huge impact on me. (Aside from having to work at my desk with wet socks a a couple times.)
But with the game, there isn't a ton to report, though that should be expected this time around. With that said, I still made some good progress and fixed a few bugs actually.
I had spoken previously about a new weapon and I'm happy to say that it's now fully implemented. I made a short video which I will upload after this devlog. It shows off the functionality of the weapon as well as the new heal spell that I added in previously. (If you take close note you will see a bug with the charge card colors at one point. Don't worry, I fixed that already, but didn't want to re-record the video for something so minor)
Charge Cards act a bit like megaman's charge up blaster, though less mobile. I also directly took inspiration from megaman's charge up so for anyone who likes megaman you can see the similarity. You will still have to halt your forward momentum to use them though. I MIGHT go back and change this to have no movement restrictions later, but the reason I didn't for now was specifically for animation purposes. I could make it so Aria just doesn't animate at all when she throws the cards while moving, but I want to see how they fare like this first. Reasoning being that you can still be mobile while you are charging the heavy shot and you can rapid fire the basic shot.
It functions simply, press the attack button for a weak rapid fire card attack or hold the button down until you begin to flash and release for a powerful card blast. Currently the basic attack is very weak. I believe I have it set to 1 damage (Same damage at lvl 1 orb or a single hit from a spread shot) and 1.4 damage at highest level. However the attack speed is fairly high and attacks quite quickly.
The trade off to the faster attack speed is that the stun duration is halved for the basic card attack so larger number of enemies can more easily overwhelm you. In it's current state it's better against single targets. And that's even true of the charge up damage. I believe I have it set to 3 at min and 4 at max. Blaster I believe is 3 min and 5 max. I did worry a bit about the blaster, but did remember that the blaster also does a small aoe and can do quite well against tightly grouped up enemies and also has the wide lock on.
I guess this is a situation to wait and see how things go. I can also add weapon upgrades to offset things too of course. For blaster I plan to add some things like reduced kickback and faster charge among other things. In the case of charge cards I haven't thought of anything definitive. I may have an upgrade that allows to pierce a target for example or I may make the aforementioned attack while moving an upgrade, but nothing is in stone yet.
I also mentioned fixing a bug earlier. The bug has to do with ammo count. The way I programmed the game is that it has an ammo system. When picking up a weapon, it sets your ammo max to the weapon's ammo max. You can fire up to the ammo max number of times before you will fire blanks. After a projectile is expended/destroyed, it restores the ammo to you. (In the case of spread projectiles, it has a single hidden entity that handles the projectiles and will only return ammo once all of the projectiles impact) (Also the grahstery has it's own special system contained within the lantern. It doesn't have ammo, the lantern does. Aria just fires from the lantern. So long as the lantern doesn't bug out, it will slowly restore grahsts)
Anyway, the bug is hard to replicate with most weapons, but the blaster it's easy. You just fire while moving into a transformation item and it will remove the ammo, but not fire the projectile. This can soft lock you until you pick up another weapon. With the new code I put in, it effectively constantly tries to refill your ammo to max, but anytime you use ammo, the counter resets to zero. So if you are rapid firing, the new system won't fill up because anytime you expend ammo, it will reset the counter. But if you soft lock with 0 ammo, it will slowly count up and eventually trigger a max ammo restore. It's only a few seconds too so you should only notice it if you specifically bug your ammo out. And half the time you spend 'getting' bugged out, the timer will be running. You won't even notice it if you turn into a blueberry.
At least you SHOULDN'T notice it. So long as I did a good job that is!
Only other thing I can think to report on is that I polished a few of the levels at in between times. Not really anything major though. I am hoping that my next report will include a new implemented enemy type, but I would prefer two. My situation is still tenuous, but due to the help of Patrons it's really helping my longevity a lot!
A commission for Vales'vulom, one of the NPCs in the game, to be a ripening blueberry as she chews bubblegum. Seems she's not even aware of the onlookers as she's too focused on her body filling with juices. It's extremely flattering that someone would comm me for something I created. Hopefully everyone here will enjoy this as much as I did creating it!
I'm only going to have three slots this time around, but if there is a large demand for them, then I will likely go ahead and accept one or two more patron only slots for this specific occasion. Just message me here if you see the slots full and I will let you know if I could accept it.
Also, I'll be willing to give a small 10% discount to paid members on my prices. I don't have it listed as a perk for my tiers as I would prefer my patreon tiers to focus on the game and I don't want to advertise something like that as a promise of the tiers when I don't always know that I will be able to offer either.
Sadly I have to report that a lot less work was done these past couple of weeks than I would have liked due to some prior work which I hadn't finished on a commission that I'd had in my backlog for some time now. Fortunately that's completely freed up now. Unfortunately my financial situation is putting me into the position where development is going to continue to be slow. Though if you have had any interest in commissioning me then that might be a good thing for you. In the coming days I will be reopening my commissions and trying to build up enough funds to support development for a longer period of time.
I think now is the appropriate time to say just how thankful I am to those of you who do support me. So, thank you very much! Even if it doesn't feel like a lot to you, it is quite a lot to me and helps a LOT. I will continue to develop the game and occasionally upload some pictures I have saved up. I've considered just uploading all of them in bulk, but was hoping a slower upload pace would keep more interest. If asked, I could certainly just upload quite a lot of stuff I have saved up in bulk for members to view.
As far as things I have actually gotten done, I haven't gotten much progress on the enemy types. Instead, the in between time I actually added a new healing spell to the game. It's fully implemented, just needs testing. It functions very simply as a rapid rejuvenation spell. It costs 5 MP and heals you for a percentage of your HP (So it will scale as you get more HP upgrades). I figure with something like this, it will allow for a bit more exploration and less fear of running out of HP while just looking around. Though it will likely come in handy more as the game progresses since I intend to have a level where candy is quite sparse in the future.
Among other development, I also sprited up some card projectiles for the next weapon that I've been working on, charge cards. This weapon is going to function similar to megaman's blaster where spamming the button throws cards which do a minor amount of damage. When you hold the button down, it charges up a strong single shot. The powered shots will be fairly strong, but won't be as powerful as the blaster weapon. In addition, the projectiles will travel in a straight line, but will be only medium range. Slightly longer than the spread weapon, but shorter range than purple/blue grahsts.
I figure this should be a nice all round weapon to use without invalidating others and fairly straight forward to program. I went ahead and attached a spritesheet if you'd like to see the projectiles and their various power levels.
As for the future, the next couple weeks will be slower, but I will try to find some time to at least have one enemy to show and I will likely implement the charge cards as well by that point. Sorry I don't have more to report on.
So it looks like next month's NPC will be an a'garian Wyrmkin/Dragonkin! Since I haven't had a real chance to express an a'garian in full pixel art yet this should be fun. Generally speaking, a'garians look like demons because of their frequent horn growths. However, they're actually mutated elves. They already have a bit of a 'dragon' look to them so this should be quite fitting for them. I have an idea for what to make them look like already as there is another main character in game who has a kind of dragonkin look to them too. Though I think for her transformation this time, I might fall back on a more basic boob hugening since it's been a while since I have done a BE focused tf and the last few months I have put a lot of work into the tfs.
It's Desatea's first time with the lantern and she's spending a bit of time learning how to use it. So of course she'd have to try out a blessings spell. Little does she know that Glimmer's blessings are quite strong! She probably should have heeded that advice about practicing without her armor on.
This took quite a bit out of me to do, though I'm really happy with how it came out honestly. I really wanted to get this kind of 'power up' animation right. What better way to power up a talimari with thay'valay goddess power than to make her grow as big as one? I tried to go light on the muscles, though I wanted her to at least look strong. Hopefully I didn't go overboard on them.
I may take it easy on next month's NPC tf. Considering it's looking like a'garian wyrmkin, I may go back to a nice, classic boob hugening. Next month I am going to have to open my comms up too so the workload is going to be much larger than usual. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys this!
The talimari often hide viscious and aggressive attitudes behind polite smiles and sarcastic comments. For Desatea she hid no ulterior motives and the dual rows of sharp teeth only displayed to sate hunger. In spite of her differences to others of her kind, she was well liked by everyone she met and aided any in need. Though she would have stayed to help her own kind willingly, she felt drawn more to thay'valay society, mannerisms, and ultimately worship. Eventually the young girl grew into adulthood and her dedication to Glimmer until she was ultimately chosen to serve as a paladin.
I have written about the talimari briefly in a post on my DA. Generally speaking, they are usually more magically inclined and quite hot headed. Not really the type you'd expect to become a paladin. Though there are some who are born more level headed and logical than others. As well, Desatea would be outside the norm for being physically strong too since talimari are supposed to be a bit on the weaker physical side to make up for their stronger magic. For Desatea it's more of a case where she is still quite capable with magic, but also has sufficient strength to wear full armor and use a sword.
But she could always use more strength to compensate don't you agree? Afterall, paladins are meant to be holy warriors right?
As I had mentioned in the poll results for April's NPC, I was going to make her into a paladin of Glimmer like Milan's sister Tyrial. (I went ahead and included a reference picture of Tyrial in her gear so you can see how the armor actually looks in detail.) I went ahead and made Desatea have a youthful look to start with in spite of her being a fully grown adult. (She is a talimari afterall) I also decided on similar eyes and gave her heterochromia as well. (Though heterochromia is a lot more common for talimari so it's not much of a surprise for her and Tyrial naturally had blue eyes so it's not the same between them)
I don't believe I've really written a ton about how paladins work in this particular universe, but it's a sort of mixture of what you'd expect of a paladin and a kind of green lantern deal. Each paladin has a lantern which can be charged up with energy from Glimmer and then used as spells or enhancements. When the energy runs out, it has to be recharged. The reliable way to recharge a lantern is to visit a church that has Glimmer's energy stored, or visit the thay'renay (thay'valay queen). The unreliable way is through prayer. The reason that it's unreliable is that the gods in this universe have very little ability to affect the world and getting their power through to their subjects is exceptionally hard and rare. The only time that Glimmer regularly delivers energy is once a year (when the barrier between the dimensions is weakest) to the queen and churches where it is then rationed out to paladins.
It's worth noting that even without any lantern energy, paladins are still quite strong warriors and often have their own magic they can use. If she weren't a paladin, Desatea would be considered a battlemage for example. A paladin in this universe wouldn't really be a class, more like an elite rank you add onto a class. There are very few paladins.
Have been working on the talimari paladin, but wanted to do some normal art of Aria so went ahead and did this and made a few variants. Had been considering giving 'Aria' a bit of a cuter look to her while retaining Illaria's normal more mature look to differentiate them. Though thinking a bit more about it, it's probably more humorous if Aria is a literal self insert of Illaria and looks completely like her too. So I guess consider this just a version of Aria where she's decided she wanted to look a bit more cute than mature and considering her wizard capabilities, this wouldn't be anything difficult for her. And when you're a wizened spell caster with ages of experience, why wouldn't you change your appearance from time to time?
Here is the video of the current levels. I forgot to mention, but the caves contain two tracks by different musicians than the usual. These are quite old tracks I've had since I nearly started working on the game so they might sound tonally different. Hopefully still enjoyable to listen to!
Another couple weeks and now I've finished the core layout of the beach region! Now they aren't 100% final as I plan to add a couple of small secrets to the area such as magic star imprints, but you can basically run through the levels right now. I also haven't added any enemies as I need to create those.
I added even more tiles to further make the regions feel rich and I programmed in some new little things like air bubbles for Aria when she's underwater, bubble spawners and fish spawners. I also modified Aria's Wingmilk TF so that when her boobs inflate she will be forced upward faster and resist downward motion. It's quite hard to move down while you're in the water and you can go up much faster to simulate... ya know... inflated boobs.
I will also modify her blueberry code just a bit to react to underwater situations too. Though I still think she will sink like a brick. She can ride bubbles in her blueberry form though which looks really goofy right now. I may end up modifying the bubbles to compress when you stand on them at least. It might be ideal to make a larger bubble that lets Aria float upward when she's a blueberry, but then make it so her normal blueberry form pops smaller bubbles or just makes them stall out. Just something to consider for the future.
Among other things, I decided to go ahead and have a bit of spookiness now and a couple of the underwater areas have some of the spooky music to them and for them to be harder than the other path by a good bit. There is a warning sign not to go down there of course, but by the time you reach the spooky section, it'll already be too late. (You can just restart at the last checkpoint though)
I'll definitely be happy to hear a bit of feedback on this as this is the first hint of the 'dissonance' in the game. I'm not sure if I had said it in a previous devlog, but the idea is that Milan will be interfering more and more as the story progresses. And Milan, being the spooky girl she is, tends to enjoy writing darker stories herself. So naturally her effect on the story will be that it gets spookier the longer the story goes on.
Though it's never really intended to become REAL horror or anything, and Illaria will ultimately be in charge of things so the spookier tone will eventually fall off in favor of humor. More like a brush with horror than an actual horror game.
As well, most of the time the spooky stuff will be optional with warning signs. (Though I will have secrets in those areas so you will have to go there eventually if you want to see it all) The main story will still have some moments where Milan makes things spooky or dissonant and mildly disturbing. I'm not going to be doing pixel art of anyone being dismembered though. (except inanimate or non-human things like mushrooms for example) It's not meant to be that kind of spooky.
Anyway, I will upload a video for members if you want to spoil yourself on it. If you want to remain spoiler free or aren't a member, I'll have a few shots of the landscape uploaded. (It's worth noting that the purely underwater areas have a special filter applied to them to look more like you're actually underwater)
Now then. I have some enemies to design and program!
Well, summer's coming up here where I live and I just so happen to also be working on the beach in the game. So why not, here's the beach theme that will appear in the game. (Though there will be a different theme for the cave areas)
As with most of the other tracks in the game, this one was done by Eclipseaudio.
Here is the basics for her blimping up and deflating. As you can see, it's very similar to Verdite's blimp tf, though with a bit less jiggle. I will try to see if I can add some sway or jiggling to her while she's floating, but I am going to implement blimping before I do any of that so I can make sure it actually works.
So these past couple of weeks I have spent primarily working on tiles and furthering the next rooms. All of the rooms are properly laid out on a basic level and are currently being prettied up and given their basic collectibles. I'll further adjust these as I go, but I usually just start off spreading the candy out to start with, then adding/removing as I go. In these current levels I'll be balancing around the new poison mechanic that I mentioned before. This devlog will be a bit shorter as most of what I am working on is just levels. Building them out and preparing them for the enemies I'll add.
With that said, I'll attach a few images of the tiles I have been working on in action. These tiles are what I'd consider one of the alternative tilesets mixed with the beach tileset. A crystalline stone set of tiles.
I also added in mossy stone tiles to help the cave areas front and back. It should add more color to the otherwise grey and a bit bland mountain tiles from before. While the most important part of level design is that it's fun, I always like making sure a level has a nice atmosphere to it to pull you into the world and make each screen memorable in some way. At least I try to do that. Having every screen be completely distinct would take a LOT more time. Like if I make a big sprite that appears only on that screen, it would definitely be memorable, but would that really be the best use of time?
On the flip side, I think that many of you will actually enjoy if I spend a bit of extra time making some shapely statues. I'm hoping to get to designing the boob statue I talked about before in the next couple weeks.
In terms of other things I managed, I also added a small waterlight sprite which is a simple floating entity that produces a light source. Said waterlight sprite can move about a certain distance from it's origin point and I programmed it so I can easily adjust that distance on the fly. As well I can lock it's Y axis so it only floats left and right. Or it can just be motionless. The waterlight sprite should just be another nice way for the environment to be lit.
And in terms of lightning, some of the crystals will be big enough to generate light as a source which will replace some of the torches that get spread about in these particular areas.
Something else which I decided to do was to followup on Verdite's blimp tf by going ahead and giving Aria her own blimp form tf. So if you'd like to see it, then I'll go ahead and add it for patrons to see and add it to the pixelart collection. I plan to add a little 'sway' to it while you're floating. I want to actually implement it this time around before I do any other parts of the animation so I know for sure that the animation doesn't interfere with gameplay. I may have to speed this animation up, or possibly remove the bulging at the end to make sure it's still fun to 'get blimped'.
In regards to this, I hadn't really talked a ton about it, but this will be a 'bad' form. And what I mean by that is that when you get blimped up in game it will be a negative thing. I plan on making it similar to the boob inflation powerup, however you will not be able to go down. Instead you will float upward slowly no matter what with only the ability to slow your ascent. You'll still be able to move left and right, albeit probably a bit slower.
And I will combine this with it being applied to you in areas where there are hazards you can hit and take damage then deflate similar to the boob powerup. And I have considered allowing Aria to 'pop' when hitting a hazard just to distinguish it from the boob inflation powerup and just have her return to normal immediately. Possibly taking extra damage or being stunned and dizzy, though I would say it's fairly unlikely that I will do that. I'd prefer the slower descent of deflation and also I don't really want to animate her popping.
I could ask everyone how they feel about it and if there was overwhelming support for it, then I might do a very simple pop that isn't detailed and very benign. That or just a pop sound and a puff of smoke. I just don't want to get anyone's hopes up for that though.
As far as the 'how' you will get blimped up, I plan on adding in an enemy spellcaster who can inflate you and a world object that, when you touch it, you blimp. Though don't expect those until after we hit the dark spooky forest levels. (There is the beach, one new level type, and another city before the spooky forest at minimum) I would like to introduce Aria's blimp form somewhere in the spooky forest levels >:D.
Here's some artwork that I had gotten of Silver, my mascot gal. I drink quite a bit of coffee so figured it would make her feel at home being a coffee addict. Might be silly but I liked the idea that drinking coffee makes her look more womanly temporarily even though she would be that trope of being some old lady in spite of looking young.
As usual, Talimari got picked so it will be off the list this time! Returning will be filimuri. Just as a reminder, there is an example of each of the races over here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/90237208
I have considered adding another race, though I didn't have them pixeled so I haven't put them in. Plus I didn't want to dillute the species polls too much. Might rather just add some more material involving the different races to show what they look like instead.
This month's poll results are in with talimari being heavily dominant for the species and paladin winning out for the appearance.
This is another scenario where the general expected personality of the species goes a bit against what you'd expect. Talimari paladins would be rare since they are a race which tends toward material and grounded research and magic. They aren't typically very religious.
However, since they are neighbors with the thay'valay, those that do feel more compelled toward gods would likely worship Glimmer, the thay'valay goddess. So I think that would probably be the ideal scenario here. Kind of the opposite of Kerli who doesn't directly worship a god. In this case, the talimari Paladin would get her power directly from Glimmer.
And that makes me think that a fitting, and fun, transformation would be her growing as big as a thay'valay, but curvier. Or maybe even have her transform into one.
And here is Verdite's transformation! In her case, she gets to blow up like a blimp! I made sure to make her feel like a weighty, gelatinous blimp. Give her that jiggly, yet tight, feeling. Thanks to a friend's advice, I also gave her idle blimp animation a bit of compression and floaty feeling. No worries about her floating away though! As the ghost of an elven slimegirl, she's very in control of her buoyancy.
It's worth noting that when doing her animation I also decided to go ahead and adapt Aria for a blimp form too. So you can look forward to seeing an Aria blimp form in the future. Though that blimp form will likely be a negative effect on her. A kind of 'forced inflation' for those who enjoy that.
Here is this month's NPC, Verdite! I named her after the gemstone verdite (Also the name of an item from King's Field (2), one of my favorite games, which raises your magic power) Following the theme of 'ghost slime girl elf' I tried to make her feel like she could be made of jello and also a ghost. I can't promise she won't haunt/possess you if you try to lick her though. Otherwise she's a polite ghost inhabiting the spooky forest, a region that will be up and coming.
Her design is rather heavily inspired by another ghosty girl that a friend had linked to me at the time and I felt it was perfect for this particular NPC.
As for her transformation, I went for something that would feel ghosty AND gelatinous.
So this Devlog I don't have a huge amount to report on, but do have some things to talk about.
First thing on the list is just reporting what I've gotten done. As of now I've finished up another puzzle shrine involving the wind inflation spell and magic star spell as the core focus to it. As well, the puzzle shrine includes a few new mechanics.
The first of these new mechanics is silence which prevents you from using spells. In this particular case there are purple glowing pedestals which will silence you in an area. While silenced, Aria emits noticeable particles showing her breath. As well you can see a blue X over the spell at the top of the UI and you will get a fizzle sound if you try to cast a spell. I tried to make this fairly obvious without crowding the energy bar further. If it's not obvious enough though I will attempt to remedy it. This would likely be easy to do by placing a blue X above Aria's head or a red x in a speech bubble or some other method. I want to avoid this however as I don't want to crowd the screen.
The second new mechanic are teleporters. For this puzzle shrine though they are exclusively used to prevent you from getting stuck. I also added positional audio to these teleporters so when you get close, they have some ambient sound that will gain volume as you get closer based on which side of them you are on. And of course, I'll take this new technique and I can apply it to things like waterfalls and such. (Which is something I've planned to do for a while but just hadn't gotten around to it.)
The third new mechanic is the door unlocking mechanic. This is just meant to add shortcuts to some areas in case you revisit them. I'm going to upload a video that shows off the shrine with limited spoilers. At the end, you can see this new unlocking mechanic. Basically you will have to give a small amount of power to a shrine and it will unlock/open an area permanently to your save file. For this shrine, this is meant to let you come back to it to donate more power to the statue that comes afterward.
The final mechanic is the boob power level upgrade statue. I haven't yet made the statue itself so that's not yet implemented, but the system to make it work is. I can't show anything for this yet really, though the room that it's located in is pretty much done. So I just have to design the statue and give it the 'upgrade' and it'll be ready to go. I will be delaying on actually making this shrine apply a max boob level upgrade though until 0.6. I want to release 0.5 and allow players to test out the boob sizes without limits first. When I finish 0.6 though I will have a few max boob size upgrades and the system for boob size limits and benefits and all that will be fully implemented. At that point you'll be able to gather the upgrades whenever you like and they'll stick. (Though it will require testing)
As far as the beach levels, they're coming along. I have laid out almost all of them, but they aren't detailed yet and I haven't added any new enemies just yet. I have one enemy made and I'll go ahead and upload his sprite to show him off. So far I have a plan to add two filimuri enemy types, a new flying enemy type, the rat enemy that I am showing here, and a pufferfish enemy. For the filimuri enemies I plan to add a poison mechanic to them. When they land a hit on you, they poison you and it will drain your energy faster. You remove the poison by picking up any candy. It's purely meant to apply just a little bit more pressure to the player to push forward.
With that said, I am going to design the filimuri enemies to be more defensive. They won't really chase you and instead keep an area guarded. They'll only pursue you if you get too close, and they'll back off if you get too far away. The filimuri enemy type will be inflatable of course.
The pufferfish enemy type will actually be mostly neutral and will ignore you for the most part. However, if you use the inflation spell with him on screen, he will puff up and become an obstacle that hurts you if you touch him. So he will be the 'be careful who you inflate' enemy type of the region. The rat enemy will not be inflatable and, in fact, is going to be immune to spells. His gimmick is going to be that he rushes up to you, stuns you, and steals your spell.
One other note regarding the beach level is that I'll be working on a new spell and weapon too, but I don't want to talk about them yet because I'm not certain how they will come out in the end. But for the next couple weeks I am just going to be working on the beach level and enemy types. I also have the NPC of the month and she has been fully designed. I just need to animate her puffing up and she'll be done.
So that's all for what's been going on and what the plan is going forward. I want to talk for a moment about sound design though. For me, I really only crop sound and adjust it's volume. I rely heavily on packs of SFX that I can scrounge together that are either free to use, or I have obtained a license. In the case of that, I've gotten a small library of varied sounds.
If you're looking for sounds for a game you might be designing, I highly recommend looking up the GDC and the free sounds they provide every year. They have quite a lot of them. As well, I know that Bluezone has some free sample sounds you can use.
But back to obtaining SFX, I learned recently to be a little careful about getting these. Make sure that you read the fine print. Having a license to use SFX doesn't necessarily mean you can use them in a game. You also have to read the EULA and a EULA might specify that you can only use the licensed sounds if you have an active subscription. For someone like myself who already has to carefully manage what little money they have, an active subscription is not a tenable option for sound design in a game that I do not clearly know when it will be released.
With that all said, I'm always on the lookout for cheap perpetual licensed SFX I can use. If you ever want to help me, feel free to tell me about bundles of sounds for very cheap. I can always use more if I can afford them. Though I cannot accept SFX sent to me that are licensed to you. It has to either be public domain or I have to be able to obtain a license for myself or I cannot use it.
And that will be all for this devlog! Thank you for supporting me thus far!
