Art DIY

Alright, now down to business. Something has happened since the last update. It's small, but important. I decided to start making sprites! Now I'm not the greatest artist in the world (probably closer to the artistic antipode of that) but ... it's liberating, fun (and frustrating) and, most importantly for this project, ... Useful. Why useful? (TLDR: lack of an artist is not a blocker in content production anymore)

My approach so far with game art, has been in the last ~10 years in this order:

1. I'll surely find some good assets for everything I need ... right?

2. Bah! I'm going to make software to make art for me!

3. Nope that doesn't work. Well, I'm going to hire somebody In The Future to do all art for me!

4. ... That's too far in the future, what about now? Well I'm going to start toying around with art, and when I get Good Enough, I'm going to actually start adding assets. That's a year down the line, probably

5. ... That's still too far in the future, I want content NOW! *Scribble, scribble...* Hey, that looks passable, let's try again. Hey! That's actually not *that* terrible. Let's integrate it - something is better than nothing.

Enter "Good Enough Art". By making (and believing) that some piece of art is Good Enough, I make more. And, eventually, the art output becomes better! Magic. Also, the fact that I started making some art doesn't mean I'm not getting an artist At Some Point, it just means that it's not going to stop me making content that needs art, because the more content I make, the closer we get to a demo! And because I like sharing, you get 16 videos showcasing bits and pieces since last update. I hope you like the new art, because Good Enough Art is here to stay, and multiply. Let's start with the animals! I wanted to add some neutral animal for populating different biomes with generally harmless critters. This is just the beginning, lots more to come eventually. We've got cats...

And owls...

And penguins!

Here's a crab, work in progress. Could not not share it :)

Here's the finished crab!

There's now support for live-editing sprites, to be able to see the changes in the "natural environment" of the sprite.

I've added overworld icons for mines, both underwater and over land. Land ones are caverns, as expected, whereas the underwater ones use some funky elevator rig for access.

Here's an animated cavern sprite for the overworld.

There are now portals scattered in the overworld. You can use these portals to quickly travel from one place in the world to another, instantly.

I have added support for bigger-than-a-tile sprites, to give a better sense of scale.

Another thing that I wanted to show for a long time was mine maps! I had the functionality but not the sprites for minecart tracks. So, now sprites have been created, and here's a map

Ok, now for a few other updates that are not art.

Added support for some town banter, some new music and dialogue sounds

Here's an example of a villager giving 5 quests, and we eventually go to complete 1. Field of view is turned off to accelerate gameplay even further.

Here's a preview of a new level object: a summoning portal, where creatures spawn periodically, sometimes better and stronger!

Here's a more complete adventure featuring a quest in a village to go deactivate some portal in a mine. We go to a mine, there are miners in the first level, going about their business, and in the 2nd level things get more dangerous, and there's a portal with the fire elementals. Quest complete!

That's it for now. Next update will probably come end of the summer. See you all in a couple months!