Business as usual

Well, progress is moving along fine, however this month seems determined to slow me down.

First power went out for 2 days, then I had to go to two different family events, and my own birthday will be coming up. I just want to work dammit -__-

4-5 days with less work may not seem like much, but it certainly feels like it when you're actually adhering to a daily schedule. I planned on having the main game done in 21 days, with the remaining days left to CGs, fixing bugs, and polishing stuff up, However, I'll have to work more than I already am if I want that to happen.

That aside, I've decided to add another element to the game. Familiars.

They'll more or less just float along behind you and attack when you do. There will be a bunch of variations, all with a different attack, and some with other functions. I have two options with such a game mechanic, both of which would be beneficial to exploration.

1. You find them around the map like normal items, and can switch between them.
2. They transform based on what items you give them. (which would look like point-style items, like food, money, jewels, etc.)

Dunno yet.

Anyhow, back to work.

Plans

Just a quick update,

I Just got finished adding a charged melee attack to the game, which basically works like the one in Crimson Brave (which is in turn is like the one in A Link To The Past, but in a platformer). I might also add different charged attacks based on which direction you're pressing when you release the button.

I'm still considering whether or not the player should start out with all of these abilities, or most of them. I suppose it's because I've play-tested the game so much, but combat feels pretty dull without all the moves.

The problem is that if I make the skills obtainable, the player could miss a lot of them, or play through the majority of the game without some of the more fun attacks. Or, if I make them all obtainable early on, it could set up false expectations of the game, making it seem like there's going to be a lot more skills than there actually are.

Haven't decided yet. I ran into the same problem with Kurovadis's mid-air downwards attack.

That aside,

Development is going about as smoothly as it can at the moment. My health issues still haven't been sorted out yet, so I'm trying to work through them as best I can. 

My current plan is to limit myself to 7 days per remaining area of the game, in order to stop myself from focusing on extra content rather than what needs to be done. After the 7 days are up, I need to move on to the next area, meaning I need to work as if the result is the final product. The remaining days of this month will be used to wrap up the game, and create the CGs, and remaining music.

As much as people will joke about having another month deadline, this is literally the last month I can afford to work on the game. I can pay rent for this month, and then that's it. However, this is the kind of pressure I thrive under, so luckily it doesn't stress me out too much, health issues aside.

I'm just looking forward to finishing this and thinking "Good, now don't let that ever happen again, dumbass."

Color palettes

Was messing around with color palettes today, 

The game I'm working on doesn't look bad, per-se, but I feel as though it's a bit boring. Rarely do I step outside my boundaries and come with a decent palette. I tend to just play it safe.

I'll hold myself back this time for time's sake, however color palettes are definitely something I want to spend more time on in the future.

Daily sketches

Did more sketching today,

I want to make it so that you can see the contours of the face based on the shape of the eyes, however I need to develop a better method than what I'm using, since it doesn't really take the angle of the eyes into account well enough. You can see that the shape of the eyes works in the last picture because of the way they arc, whereas in two of the other sketches, they conflict with the shape of the face a bit too much.

I guess I'll practice that tomorrow.

The other problem is that my current method of drawing the face often makes me end up with something I have to tweak a lot. I want to come up with a method that gets me to that result in the first place, so the next time I do sketches perhaps I'll do the initial guidelines, make adjustments, and then draw guidelines over the result, to see what would have brought me that result in the first place.

There's also the mouth, which I tend to draw way off centre, when realistically it'd be more like this (and probably rotated inwards even more than this.)