Dev Log — February 2023

Hi everyone!

New month, new year, and time to work on the update at last! I have most of the next three weeks open, which should give me the time I need to finish, test, and roll out the long-awaited update for the game!!

January did turn out to be an exceptionally busy month for me because I had agreed to help out some friends with their PlayStation and Xbox ports. I never had the opportunity to work on a PlayStation or Xbox game before and the money was difficult to pass up with the recent increases in living costs. Getting to develop for these platforms was both insightful and a lot of fun!

New Item Graphics

We've had a part-time artist working on the game for a month now and we decided to start by replacing some of the oldest item graphics in the game while adding new varieties, starting with dyes, candies, and ornamental charms!

Liquid colors are placeholder and will reflect how the dye colors the target item

Many new candies are planned for future polymorph forms

Our new approach to graphics is to draw them ahead of time instead of a just-in-time. That way, when I decide it's time to implement something for the game, I won't be blocked by a lack of graphics! For this reason, we're preparing a number of new dyes, candies, item accessories, and even new talismans for when the new exploration system is added to the game!

New Character Sprites (Again)!

Before we start making a lot of expensive graphics for the game, such as dynamic avatars, we're working on a new and future-safe style for the game. I find the current style is a bit on the cartoony side and not sexy enough. The game is inherently adult, and I think it should look more so. To begin with, we will focus on new graphics and later we will circle back and adjust existing characters as well.

A sketch of Lacey from the most recent workshop. We are also trying out poses for full-screen images.

Improvised Weapons

While planning out graphics for the game, improvised weapons and junk items also came up, so we can figure out what items we need for this feature. It sparked a bigger design workshop, which I've condensed into a new development document for those who might be interested in how engineering and magi-tech will be implemented in the game! I'll keep my thoughts in the document as to not explode the size of this dev log!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eUnieoLSt1ehpBoVa6YqrQEEKYVQ39qf5YYlYw37E18/edit?usp=sharing 

—That's it for this month's dev log! Hopefully, this will be the month I finally crack the big technical overhaul to the game, and I will also try to find some more time to stream during the next few weeks! I even upgraded my setup with a tiny screen for the chat ^^

Thank you again for all your support and I'm looking forward to really getting back into developing the game again! ❤️

Cheers,

Tinon