New Isosprites

WIP ui stuff

^ popups for damage context

^ new status effect badges (used to be just text) still wip

^banter boxes... suppose to give room for side comments in a way, might still be annoying to the player

^ side box for less important dialogue, maybe ill have it come out of the speaker like cross code

Mar 1, 2022

Another day another mockup, even though I feel like I got nothing done in 2022 I guess maybe it was just the year of the mockups?

Selective Interaction

Very simple, yet super useful, feature, now you can directly choose what to interact with when surrounded by multiple options. Don't ask what happens if you have more than 26 things nearby...

New Chests!

Compared to the 2D ones getting this 3D one up to snuff was a bit of work. I still need to retexture the inside of the top half and add some glow effects maybe. I'm slowly getting a hang of blender and 3D workflows but I don't think I'm ready to do a house just yet... Maybe I should make some variants... I kinda want to make a minecrafty one that's super cuby.

As for why I decided to model a chest instead of billboarding one like the trees... So you can stand on it! I have some level design ideas in mind where a chest or some other small object is required to reach locations but for now, it's still just an idea.

Pause Menu Implementation

I decided to stop tweaking the look and actually start putting it into the game. Exporting assets is a lot of work so I just kinda put placeholders in...

Feb 26, 2022

It was around the 1 year anniversary since development started when I originally posted this and it totally slipped my mind. Hopefully I do something for the 2 year anniversary, but i'm busy and it's technically now (Feburary) Welp, I always have next year

Journal UI

Started implementing another important menu. This one gives you and overview of all your quests and lets you lightly manage them. I plan to also put a 'database' feature in so you can come back to important information/lore you've encountered previously.

Csprites

Csprites, aka Combat Sprites are the counterpart to isosprites. They show up in the battle scene. I don't really like the look of them and I dread coding for some reason. So lets redraw them. new base

Test sketch

alice head

yea she frowns underneath the mask

looks okay I guess, but still feels off, might redraw again later... (I did redraw them again later, I know since this work was done months ago)

NPC Reactivity

It's a small thing, but I added this system so that other game objects can pull the attention of NPCs nearby so that it seems like they are reacting to what the player or environment does. I really need to look into drawing more sprites, all my game characters have so little in terms of expression. It's a bit sad...

New Frame Plus (on Youtube) has a series called The Animation of Final Fantasy. It is a really good look at the importance of animation and its impact on storytelling. I plan to use whatever I can from the series to guide how I animate and express my game visually. I don't know if on my own I'll even scratch the multitude of means by which Square Enix did the impossible, but I like to dream.

a clip from my second devlog... you should watch it :>