Devlog #36: Ghost Town

It’s been a stressful week outside of gamedev, but I’m feeling better than ever about my game. I didn’t get an excessive amount done this week, but I feel like I’ve finally hit the point where I’m starting to see the finish line (although it’s still a long way off).

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Last week’s goals

-Finalise forest visuals: done and more!
-Work on cave visuals: done!
-Polished POW finisher animations x3: nope
-Ghost profile sprites x4: one done

My brother needed to use my drawing tablet for a uni assignment this week (and this coming week too) so I’ve been sharing it with him and got less drawing stuff done that I'd hoped to, so I got some other stuff done instead.

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Ghost town, again

After writing my devlog last week, the first thing I did was start on something not on my goals list- Revamping the ghost town.

I first added the ghost town way back, and spent a lot of time on the houses in the town but the area around it has always been a bit lacking and I knew I'd have to update it eventually.

So I've kept the layout basically the same but the main changes are the new floors, fences, bridges, stairs and the road extended from the right area. 

(This is a screenshot from the gamemaker editor so it's a bit off)

I decided  this will be the scene from the town that I'll have in the trailer. You can see the new telephone poles I added properly here too-

I also changed the gap in the town blocking off the right area into one of the voided areas that I talked about in a previous devlog. These can be cleared away but only if you come from the right direction, in this case the right side and only accessible after beating a boss.

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Cave, again

I didn't really have a good idea for how to do the cave walls so I just did a single block colour scrappily as a tester and it turned out looking pretty cool, so I just kept it like that.

This cave sprite is actually why I'm feeling better about my game this week. I realised I've been overthinking my art style and gotten a bit overwhelmed at the thought of all the sprites and animations I still have left to go.

I expected to have to make a cave roof tileset that all perfectly lined up and could be resuable, but ended up just making a single unique sprite in a few minutes. And sure it shows, but that's the art style I'm going for and I don't want rooms to look cookie cutter tileset rpg anyway so it's a win-win. I can always go back and make improvements if I need but I really should just be focusing on getting things in place and working first.

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Goals for next week

I won’t know how much time my brother needs my tablet this week so I might have to be a bit flexible. Still, the main focus will be on getting the trailer finished and polished.

-Polished POW finisher animations x3
-Ghost profile sprites x3
-Decide on/ create a font for the trailer
-Forest entrance area

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With my tablet borrowed, I pivoted to designing future areas and got a lot done on the forest area and the final 'dungeon' and it's coming along great! Still undecided if I'll show any of it in devlogs for spoiler reasons, but I might when I run out of other stuff to show. Thanks for reading!