Sugar and Spice

Screenshot of sugar in-game

All of Sugar's Sprites

Boss (Spice) and beginning enemy (Cakey)

 

 

Spice Sprite

I am making a Mario clone because I CAN'T DO SIMPLE....

and I need to do something simple to start.

It is coming along -very- well, I am almost finished with the first level. I will only work on things for that level until it is finished, I made the Spice sprite to be my basis for all other enemies. Other than her, the rest of this is needed for the first level. =)

Will update with more as it comes along.

Art Dump the Second

Pardox concepts

Dyre WiP

Chibi concepts

Robot concepts for Chibi game

New Glimmer style

Some things I forgot to put up. ><

Glimmer is the more important of them. I've decided on a style and will be able to work on it again. - without the nagging voice nagging about the monotone boxy environments and blank character-shaped things.

So there's some things.

Oh Brother art will likely pick up again after I get more work done on Glimmer. Been a bit out of sorts lately and need to get back to being productive.

Art Dump

SLIME! Because SLIME!

It doesn't have a name, but I love it...just the same

basics of a height chart; "toddlers" -> "Nini" -> "Big Brother" -> "Daddy" -> "Momma", everyone else is in there somewhere and monsters can potentially hit the top there.

Potions!

He is the Merchant. He wont tell you his name, you haven't made him enough money yet.

Dumping arts

Not sure if I've posted some of these yet, will go back and check but for now -STUFF

OB sketches

Turn, Granny, turn

Mini size comparison

Some things

Granny - an NPC

Lyra, in her housewear

Sketches!..with color even.

Nini's Mom

Nini’s mom, redesigned again. I need to figure out how to make all of this move, she has a lot of moving bits. And bounce.
At-home costume to come soon, still not sure what she’ll be wearing around the house, but this is her “Hag robe”. Otherwise known as the battle gear.
Father and Brother to come soon as well, once I figure out how to draw the mens.
AND RANDOM NPCS…because I reeeally need to do those at some point. I am neglecting people (and places) in favor of Nini. ><
That stops now.

More Nini

She's so fun to draw now (though I'm having trouble thinking of how to make her move, which is why there are so few of these)

I found my Nini!

Roughs

It is fun and fairly easy to keep consistent! More to come. = )

More Nini Tests

As I did not get any feedback on which were better, I combined them a bit.

Ignore the awful body, I'm more focusing on hair and face. Will try out action poses and maybe a walk cycle to see if I really like it.

Boss Mock - Slime

Concept for a boss. Ideally, the camera will pan out to show this scene and the accompanying dialogue. Then zoom back in for the actual battle.


I have little introductory scenes planned for the bosses. Namely because I love bosses and think they should be given some background and screen-time before they're maimed horribly. Also, as many of them will have few hints to suggest their approach, I'm hoping these will give the player time to plan for the battle. A nice full view of the boss should at least get the brain going on how they might fight, or possible weaknesses.

It's mostly a desire to show off the bosses though.

I'll likely attempt more of these, to work some things out. I need to learn scenery and monster design. Probably try to rough out the common areas too, get some of the normal monsters in there and see how things mesh.

I'm still not sure what style I'm using here, but I have been using the same general colors and a lineless approach...so probably stick to that.

Then I will need to learn how to sprite in this style...

----
...I'm still working in Construct too. I learned the basics to building a cutscene (which is where I was stuck) but now I have to re-write all of my code to accommodate it, which I've been hesitant to do. Luckily Glimmer is monotone and simple, so once I do get that done I should have little trouble with the rest of it. Then I can move on to something a little more complicated (or at least something with dialogue and a menu) before finally starting on this project.

And that is an update. More to come late.

Arts

Some things. Playing with monster designs. Kind of in a rut, if the lack of updates didn't make that obvious. Wanted to work on monsters designs for Oh, Brother...so here are things. Playing with brush settings, too. Nothing too big.

Remnants Concepts

Quick sketches and colors for some enemies in two of my game worlds. Because I needed a break from learning Construct. ><

The little pink one is the lowest level of them, the green the second and the purple the boss.

More Mock-ups

Possible boss

These take a few minutes, so I keep doing them. I'll need to figure out how to properly handle the tentacles if I want to do this, but it seems like a neat thing.

Tomorrow I plan to work on enemy AI, as I haven't done much with that yet and I have all of the hero's moves down already.

Not Dead

I haven't had a lot of time to work on anything, been doing a lot of sleeping, mostly.

I have been fiddling with Construct and Glimmer when I had the time and wasn't too tired, and have figured out a few things.

Many of my old writing projects have taken a back seat to my art and game projects, so instead of trying to write for National Novel Writing Month - I'm going to work on this game. It's small and simple and if I really focus, I should be able to finish it by the end of the month. That's the plan anyway.

Today, for about ten minutes, I managed to get my hands to draw something. So here's a mock-up of a possible level. My last post shows I have working in-engine mostly. Save the animations, this is the first real art I've done for this. I didn't want the world to be blank backgrounds and square platforms. This is just a mock-up of course, subject to change (I think more can be done with the background), but it's something to look at when building levels.

The ball of light is the goal, the little eyes are there to see to it she doesn't reach it.

Chelestra Family Sketch

Left to Right; Mason, Coren, Lyra, Nini

The Chelestra family. I haven't drawn them in a while and they needed to be redesigned and fit to size with Nini.

Mason Walker is Nini's Big Brother, on the far left. His face is mostly covered as he's meant to remain a mystery for some time. Last Nini saw him, that is how he looked.

Her father, Coren Vladimir, is Arch-mage of the Rune. The only master of Rune magic left in the world, he is also headmaster of Unaia Magic Academy and Mayor of Unai. He is never seen without his robes, but he does have hands and feet under there. 

Lyra Maleficent is Nini's mother, shown in her cleaning wear, she is a housewife. Also a very powerful swamp witch (Hag).

Nini, you know. ^.-

Nini Sketches

Trying something a little taller, with a bit more detail. Longer hair will animate better, trying to get the big buns to bounce properly was driving me nuts anyway.

I have also been informed that little rounded-headed chibis are not terribly relatable.  Hopefully this is better.

Still not sure how she'll jump, but I like the fall up there on the right. Could fix up the hair a bit, but it's a nice start.

Mock-up - Chelestra Household

I'm thinking just Nini's room will be on screen, if that helps for size.

 Chelestra home. Nini is in her room (dressed and headed for the door), Fluffy is in his little bed (he's supposed to be out on a walk, but I wanted to see if the bed looked silly - it does), Nini's Mom is doing dishes (you'd think a powerful witch would be doing something more important, but she is also a housewife), and there is a kitty on the couch (they didn't have one before, but I think it'll add to the witch image if she has a black cat).

In case it is not obvious, the white outlines of doors are there to represent foreground doors.
-

Turns out "Kitten Quest" will be the thing I work on when I need a break from this one.

I need to work out how, the Demo at least, content will look and play before I actually fiddle with stuff in Construct. I understand now why some developers prefer to have the graphics done before they work on the code. Place-holders are just not good enough.

A mock-up, however, can be used as a background to work out size, location and maybe even flow.

Kitten Quest - A Mini Adventure

An old animation, the walk is very wrong

The ENTIRE MAP (roughed out anyway)

The beginning area (some stuff is still missing)

"Oh, Brother" is turning into a much bigger project than I anticipated.
I'm still learning Construct and trying to solidify everything for it, and as indicated by the dolls in that room mock-up, I am always thinking about it. However, since I'm still learning the program, I thought I'd try a super simple little platformer to get me started.

It's an idea I'd planned long before I wanted to make "Oh, Brother". A simple game about a Kitten on a quest to find his lost toy. I was going to use it as one of many little platformers to work up to the Metroidvania "Starfall" that I still hope to make someday. "Oh, Brother" was actually going to be one of the stepping stones as well, only it was to be pure RPG to teach me how the hell to write a game. Since it's morphed into something both simpler and more complicated than it's original incarnation - I am going back to the Kitten game. 

I need to know how Construct works and trying to make a, relatively, complicated action-adventure platformer is not really helping me learn. More it's driving me nuts and draining my motivation. Which is bad.

Kitten Quest wont be complicated in the least. Mainly exploration and platforming. No Menus, no real quests to speak of beyond the main one and enemies will be of the "they touch you and it hurts" variety. With attacks being close and simple.

NPC interaction will be limited to asking for hints to the main quest and requesting assistance opening doors, both of which will be handled without dialogue. I'll toss up a mock-up of how I hope to handle the communication in a little bit.

For now, here is the basic story -

"You are a kitten. You've woken up from your Mid-day nap to find your favorite squeaky toy is missing. It is very important to you, so much so that you actually roll your fluffy butt out of bed to look for it. After a lazy search of your surroundings, you lament the obvious. You'll have to leave the room. And on such a warm, lazy day..

Of you go to begin your adventure!"

Kitten (as yet unnamed) is a pampered house cat. He does not like water, he is not much of a hunter and he certainly couldn't stand being outdoors for more than a minute (especially with the family dog out there). Throughout the game he will have to toughen up and learn to behave a bit more like a cat and less like a fop if he hopes to get his toy back.

As for Health, I'm going with a fairly simple Hearts and Lives system. Kitten begins with three hearts, each hit takes half (some meaner things take a whole one). Once his hearth are depleted, he loses a Life and hurries back to his bed. This means a possibly long walk for the player, but no other progress is lost. If he loses all of his Lives, however, it's Game Over.

There will be ways to gain extra Hearts and Lives (max 9 for each, because cat), and ways to recover Hearts.

Other than that it's basically run around, figure out how to get the doors open, follow the hints to the Squeaky Toy, get the Toy, go back to bed.

Simple, hopefully short, and with enough basic things to teach me how to work the engine. = )

I hope to paint it all out like the images above, so it shouldn't take too long to get it all sorted, at least. Getting things to work will take a bit longer, but I believe the tutorials I found cover all of what I want to do (or give me the information to figure it out).

I'm going to try and finish this as quickly as I can. Taking time to do things correctly, but I want to challenge myself to get something done in a short amount of time. A month, at most.

Wish me luck!
====

Long Update is LONG!  I am sorry...

Title Screen Mock-up

Nini sits in her special place, Fluffy at her side, Diary open and ready

Possible Title Screen.


I'm thinking the title screen will scroll down to this shot, showing a big blue sky and clouds first, then the horizon with the glowing city in the distance, then the big tree and finally down to what you see here.

The menu options haven't changed much from the demo. I still want it to read like a diary entry.

--
The background will be made up of many scrolling layers, with this view being the one from the top-most area of the first town map. 

Other areas, further down, will show more of the tree-line and mountains in the distance, without the water or the reflection. Even further down will have a frame of leaves and the tree-line in the distance.

 I'm shooting for something close to the brilliant look of the backgrounds in Iconoclasts. I've never seen such beautiful backgrounds and I honestly didn't know that was even a possibility. So now I'm going to play with that and see what I can do to add more depth to my maps.

More Nini Concepts

Playing with style still

The start of a walk cycle, her hair still need some bounce

Still trying to figure out a style. I need to figure out how she'll hold her dolls, and nail down the look of the varying costumes still.

I think they'll work a bit more like the suits from Metroid now. Instead of equipping them, she'll put them on when she earns them and they will stay on until she gets the next one. This way I'll know around when she'll be wearing what and can plan the areas better. Not to mention a new look for each Chapter, keeps it a little more interesting. And I wont have to worry about the cutscene images being out of place, so I can have her wearing whatever costume she's in for that Chapter without too much hassle.

Will play with monster designs in the side-view next. Also need to do more environments, I have little experience with them so I keep putting it off.

There's also the matter of the dolls. Still not sure if their special abilities should be things she just gets to do when she earns them, or if the doll will do it for her. I've decided how they'll work as weapons, and want the magic to work a bit like Fortune Summoners. Easy changes between spells, and combo buttons to press for some. She'll just have more spells to choose from, being able to switch dolls to access different elements (a bit more like the beam weapon in Metroid).

My goal is to keep everything quick and easy with as little need to go into the menu as I can manage. At least for the combat areas. She'll still need to go into the menu to save, check Star pieces, current quests, map, look at everything she's found and whatnot. But for combat and exploration, I want to make sure there's as little break in the action as possible. And no need to equip things. She'll have a button to switch between dolls and her costumes will merely add abilities and not take any away.

Lots of stuff running through my head. ><

Hopefully it all works out and ends up fun.