Update!
Before we get into the post, a quick announcement. As fun as these bi-weekly posts are, each one eats up almost an entire workday of mine to make. There's still a lot of work left to do on this game, especially as we get closer to finishing it, and these posts are eating into time that needs to be spent actually polishing up the game and tying up all the loose ends. So until we have a trailer ready, we're going to drop to doing one post a month instead of two. Hope that's understandable!
Speaking of a trailer, we are currently mulling over exactly what that trailer should look like and talking to a "cool dude" about making one, so expect something to feast your eyes on by the end of the year.
So what am I doing this week? Well, I'm glad you asked because that's essentially what this blog post is about!
As some of you know, back when Mewgenics was conceived, it was a fully black and white game. When Tyler and I brought it back from the dead, adding splashes of color was essential because it's very hard to make a game with thousands of icons without using color to help differentiate them. Early in development, we started adding colors for classes, eventually bringing color throughout the game with a limited color palette. The last few days have been spent colorizing more of the game's backgrounds (by Sony Shock). I do this very similarly to how old photographs or Technicolor movies were done, essentially painting behind a grayscale image to bring in color.
With each new area, I try to limit my color palette to four colors and reuse those specific colors throughout. The colors also stay mostly grayscale to keep that bled-out pastel tone the game has.
This specific background is used in the game's starting tutorial where Butch is introduced. For NPCs, we use a similar dialogue setup that Animal Crossing uses. We even came up with our own way of doing "Animalese," essentially how I did it back in Time Fcuk.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you can see, Butch has a range of emotions we can call on depending on what he's saying, and the same goes for all the other NPCs.
Development-wise, we only have 1.5 more NPCs to be animated until that aspect of the game is completed. I've also been working on the NPCs' shops, which are still a work in progress. We need a few specific backgrounds for them, but the foundation of the NPCs should be 100% by the end of the month.
We have also hired a bonus programmer to help us push to the end of development, Graeme Little, a fellow indie dev, close friend, and very tall person! Graeme will be attempting to climb the giant mountain of events that remain for Mewgenics... honestly, like 100 of them, each one featuring at least eight possible outcomes. So, yeah, this aspect of the game is a great deal of work, so let's hand it to him! (Also, go check out what he's working on when he's not doing cat-related things. His current project is honestly pretty damn neat).
And that's that!
See you next month, where I'll either go over furniture, or maybe Tyler will show off what he's been working on.
See ya!
-Edmund
Speaking of a trailer, we are currently mulling over exactly what that trailer should look like and talking to a "cool dude" about making one, so expect something to feast your eyes on by the end of the year.
So what am I doing this week? Well, I'm glad you asked because that's essentially what this blog post is about!
As some of you know, back when Mewgenics was conceived, it was a fully black and white game. When Tyler and I brought it back from the dead, adding splashes of color was essential because it's very hard to make a game with thousands of icons without using color to help differentiate them. Early in development, we started adding colors for classes, eventually bringing color throughout the game with a limited color palette. The last few days have been spent colorizing more of the game's backgrounds (by Sony Shock). I do this very similarly to how old photographs or Technicolor movies were done, essentially painting behind a grayscale image to bring in color.
With each new area, I try to limit my color palette to four colors and reuse those specific colors throughout. The colors also stay mostly grayscale to keep that bled-out pastel tone the game has.
This specific background is used in the game's starting tutorial where Butch is introduced. For NPCs, we use a similar dialogue setup that Animal Crossing uses. We even came up with our own way of doing "Animalese," essentially how I did it back in Time Fcuk.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you can see, Butch has a range of emotions we can call on depending on what he's saying, and the same goes for all the other NPCs.
Development-wise, we only have 1.5 more NPCs to be animated until that aspect of the game is completed. I've also been working on the NPCs' shops, which are still a work in progress. We need a few specific backgrounds for them, but the foundation of the NPCs should be 100% by the end of the month.
We have also hired a bonus programmer to help us push to the end of development, Graeme Little, a fellow indie dev, close friend, and very tall person! Graeme will be attempting to climb the giant mountain of events that remain for Mewgenics... honestly, like 100 of them, each one featuring at least eight possible outcomes. So, yeah, this aspect of the game is a great deal of work, so let's hand it to him! (Also, go check out what he's working on when he's not doing cat-related things. His current project is honestly pretty damn neat).
And that's that!
See you next month, where I'll either go over furniture, or maybe Tyler will show off what he's been working on.
See ya!
-Edmund