Weekly Spoiler III: Time resumes its flow

[Danno]

Well, here we are again. I'll try and get some weekly spoilers going again.

This week's spoiler is... the return of fodder NPCs!

2021-03-07 npcs again sheesh.jpg (52.45 KiB) Viewed 25332 times

I've drawn unique illustrations for several NPCs - some with intended purposes, others as fodder. 34 NPC drawings have been completed so far, though some of them are old and might be redrawn at some point. You might be asking, "Why so many NPCs?" Here's a summarized explanation!

.:Specific NPCs:.
-Serves a specific function, such as shopkeeper or skill trainer.
-Might be used for a specific quest line.

.:Fodder NPCs:.
-Makes the newb towns have a semi-believable number of NPC residents that can make the towns function, not just a bunch of empty buildings with 1 shopkeeper running the whole joint.
-Some exist as family members to specific NPCs so every town isn't just a town of orphans.
-I think it makes it more interesting for the player to reach a new town and meet new NPCs with unique artwork rather than it just be a ghost town. It's sort of like exploring the world just to see what's there, but you get a micro-reward by discovering an interactive NPC and seeing some new art.

I could just draw headshots for the fodder NPCs instead of (almost always) drawing a full body picture - it'd save time and let me pixel more, I suppose. Personally, I like when games don't skimp on the art, though. I think games with lots of art are just more interesting to look at. The NPC art is also somewhat useful as concept art for their sprites.

Anyway, the plan is to have branching dialogue options when talking with NPCs in quests. Basically, that means when an NPC asks you to do a quest for them, you have options besides "accept" and "decline". There'll sometimes be options that allow you to learn more about the NPC, learn more about the quest, bribe the NPC, extort the NPC, gain the NPC's favour, be a sarcastic wise ass, and more. That said, having a small selection of fodder NPCs available makes it easier for us to throw in some extra dialogue options to discover game lore or have a fodder NPC take on a small role in a quest.

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... I finally finished these shoes!

2021-03-14 shoes.png (6.86 KiB) Viewed 25309 times

I guess they were sitting unfinished for nearly a year? I had to wrap things up with all the sitting poses and lying down pose.

[Cevil]

The journey of Re:Spite might just be the biggest tease in history. Looking good though Danno!

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... base sprite updates...!

Here's a before/after GIF to make the changes easier to identify.

2021-03-21 base sprite changes.gif (11.1 KiB) Viewed 25277 times

And here it is without the obnoxious before/after animation.

2021-03-21 base sprite changes (old).png (5.29 KiB) Viewed 25277 times

2021-03-21 base sprite changes (new).png (5.55 KiB) Viewed 25277 times

Here's a summary of what's different so you don't have to zoom in:
-The 1st front view's rear foot has been bothering me for a long time with how indistinct/blobbish it was. It is now in the shape of a foot.
-Adjusted some other leg/foot shapes to be more distinct and fit the game's perspective better.
-Made the front view male's chest less stiff.
-Made the back view butt and shoulder blades less stiff.

I wanted to start some new equipment, but these base sprite issues kinda got in my way. I still have to update the female base sprite (should mostly just be a matter of copy+pasting the legs), then maybe I can actually start something new.

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... some new equipment in progress.

2021-03-28 leather armour concept.png (3.2 KiB) Viewed 25251 times

I basically just wanted to make some leather armour. It won't quite look like this in the game, though. Some key points:
-Shoulder equipment is separate from body equipment, so the shoulder pads will be optional.
-We don't exactly have a system for it yet, but glove equipment is also intended to be optional. It could get messy, so I'm not sure at this point if the gloves will be entirely separate or if part of it will be built into the top.
-Long boots are also a tricky subject. For this equipment, I'm considering having it built into the pants as shown here. Players could then fill in the blanks with whatever footwear they want. I'm still on the fence with this, I might turn it into full, separate boots after all.

I also updated the female base sprite to give it the same updates the male sprite received (turned out to be a little more than straight copy+pastes, I forgot I shaded the female sprite's legs differently). I still have to update all the pants equipment accordingly, too.

[Danno]

Not the most thrilling spoiler, but here's some progress on last week's equipment:

2021-04-04 leather armour concept continued.png (5.38 KiB) Viewed 25203 times

The front view still had some incomplete areas before, so those are all tidied up now. I made the back view and also the female fitting version of the armour. The differences are subtle, but it's there.

Anyway, I decided I'll make the boots, gloves, and shoulders all separate. It'll give us something to experiment with when we're testing out glove and shoulder equipment, as well as testing long boots. If the tests fail, then I'll just integrate it into the equipment by default. I might still do some touchups, then I'll get going on the walking animations for this equipment. It'll probably be a long ride!

[Danno]

Still working on that equipment. Here's some walking animations in progress:

2021-04-11 leather armour walking.gif (9.45 KiB) Viewed 25100 times

[Danno]

Stiiiiiiiill workin' on it.

2021-04-18 leather stuff surely but slowly.gif (10.05 KiB) Viewed 24977 times

I've ignored the website a bit too long, so I'm thinking I'll work on getting the screenshots gallery up and running again.

[Danno]

It takes a long time to make new equipment )-:

2021-05-02 leather stuff - Male Attack.gif (8.76 KiB) Viewed 24810 times

Added a sloppy axe for fun.

[Danno]

It's been a long week (month?)! I had to write a bunch of exams this month, so that's why there hasn't really been any progress lately.

I've almost finished the pants for this set of equipment. Here are some screenshots of me testing it out.

2021-05-29 those pants again.png (84.76 KiB) Viewed 24528 times

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... a new tunic in progress!

2021-06-06 new tunic.gif (9.76 KiB) Viewed 24465 times

That other equipment set was getting pretty tedious, so I thought it might help to have something to alternate my efforts on.

[Danno]

Here's how this thing's coming along. I circled the stuff I still have to do. I haven't done anything with the gloves besides the basic front/back standing pose, but I'll get around to it at some point.

2021-07-04_leather-armor.jpg (169.71 KiB) Viewed 24068 times

It's slow and tedious work, but it's nearly done! Well, sorta. The pants are unisex, but I still have to make the female version of the top. Usually this goes a bit faster since I can directly copy+paste certain parts and modify other parts rather than making it again from scratch.

Anyway, just wanted to check in. I feel equipment spritesheet updates are too boring to post every week, which is why there's been a lack of spoilers lately.

[Danno]

Time's just flying by with little to show for it! I don't really have anything interesting to share, but I'll just go ahead and blab about a little bit of stuff.

As I've been working on the new equipment, I've been refining the base sprite a little here and there. These aren't very noticeable changes, so it's not really worth showing before/after pics. It's basically just some minor animation/consistency improvements. With these changes and the walking animation changes I posted about previously, I had to go back and fix up a bunch of old equipment to fit the modified sprite. Affected equipment revision progress: 7/14 (50%).

I'm planning to have a set palette for all equipment so things go together better. Originally, I thought it'd be cool to have the entire game use a single palette, but I kept finding myself wanting to use colours outside of my palette's range. For example, just the hair and skin colour options already use dozens of colours. So, my new approach will be to use a specific set of colours for clothing the same way I do for hairstyles. It was thanks to our testing stages of the game that I saw people wearing, say, several different blue items, but then it looked silly when the blues didn't quite match.

The leather armour from the previous spoiler is complete - well, the male version is. I still have to make the female version. The pants are complete. The blue tunic is progressing steadily; the hardest part is done, now I just have to make it through the tedious part.

Once this equipment is done, I plan to focus on boring interface stuff (our game window will be bigger than before, so the interface needs to be changed to fit).


Here's a random transparency report of my efforts this year:
January - 30 hrs 20 mins total - 535 mins website graphics / 1285 mins NPC art
February - 12 hrs 40 mins total - 640 mins website graphics / 120 mins NPC art
March - 17 hrs 45 mins total - 600 mins pixel art / 465 mins NPC art
April - 6 hrs 10 mins total - 370 mins pixel art
May - 4 hrs 25 mins total - 265 mins pixel art
June - 8 hrs 10 mins total - 490 mins pixel art
July - 19 hrs 55 mins total - 1025 mins pixel art / 170 mins NPC art

Grand total: 99 hrs 25 mins

---Pixel art breakdown---
Male leather top completion time: 15 hrs
New pants completion time: 7 hrs
New tunic progress: 13 hrs
Base sprite adjustments, fixing old equipment: 11 hrs

---Random notes/excuses---
-It's easier to stay motivated with NPC art instead of pixel art. NPC art is a single drawing (fresh), pixel art is redrawing/modifying the same drawing dozens of times (tedious).
-I was in a fulltime training course in April and May, hence the pathetic effort.
-I was working on my house and helping my parent(s) with a lot of stuff in June )-:
-Still working on my house in July, but I should have enough time in between to put in a better effort going forward. I'm trying to work my way back to my goal of at least 30 hours per month.

edit: Updated July times to show entire month's progress.

[Danno]

Here's the progress on the new tunic.

2021-08-01 noble tunic.jpg (145.89 KiB) Viewed 23766 times

Probably somewhere between 0.5~1.5 hours to finish it off.

[Danno]

The male version of the new tunic is done. I'm working on the female one now. Here's the walking animation:

2021-08-08 - noble tunic - Female Walk2.gif (9.57 KiB) Viewed 23672 times

[Danno]

New female tunic is done. Here are some colour variations I had in mind (subject to change).

2021-08-16 noble tunic colours.png (6.77 KiB) Viewed 23543 times

Currently working on updating some old equipment to fit some base sprite changes, then I'll be working on the female version of that leather armour from before. Not the most exciting stuff, I know, but the game will be better for it in the end!

[Danno]

This week's (?) spoiler is... monster idle animations!

2021-12-05 chicken idle.gif (4.3 KiB) Viewed 16432 times

Tempting as it is to make new monsters, this is probably a good time to bring the existing ones to their full potential. I'm intending to work on idle and skill animations for some monsters. The idle animation is intended to occur when the monster is not in combat. For example, the chicken will walk around and sometimes peck the ground. Monsters will have different idle animation frequency, possibly with some random element implemented so they aren't all pecking the ground at the same time! The frequency for something like a chicken would be medium-low so they aren't doing it constantly. Meanwhile, a flying monster would have an idle animation frequency high enough that they'd constantly be animated (i.e. always flapping their wings).

The main obstacle is planning the monster sprite sheets in a way that maintains some consistency; for example, for every monster, frame 1 might be the standing pose, frames 2-5 might be the idle animation, frames 6-9 might be walking animations, etc. Once skill animations get added to the mix, it becomes even more complex (depending on the way things are coded). The simplest approach would be to make it "one size fits all" - the same amount of idle frames, walking frames, skill frames, etc. for every monster. This chicken has 4 frames for its idle animation, for example, but is 4 frames enough for every monster? Hopefully it is since that'd make things simpler!

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... Birbek's idle animation!

2021-12-12 birbek idle.gif (7.28 KiB) Viewed 14220 times

This happy little fellow will do a chirping animation every now and then.

[Danno]

This week's spoiler is... the beginning of monster skill animations!

2021-12-19 birbek wing attack.gif (6.86 KiB) Viewed 10073 times

The intention is for monsters to do more than simply walk up to the player to be slaughtered. When certain conditions are met, a monster might use a skill. Monster skills could allow attacks to have extra range, more damage, status effects, or more (?) !

For comparison, here's the birbek's current default attack.

2018-05-29 birb attack.gif (6.11 KiB) Viewed 10073 times

[Danno]

The back view version of the birbek's special attack is done.

2021-12-19 birbek wing attack.gif (9.01 KiB) Viewed 9087 times

Admittedly, the back view is always less fun to make than the front view! It took, like, twice as long to make.