PixelPuddle
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Progress update: faster speed and more visual effects!
🕑 Added 2023-07-23 00:02:40 +0000 UTCHey all! I'm back with the mid/late July progress update. I wanted to post this on Friday but some unrelated-to-the-game technical issues got in the way, and then Patreon was acting up today, but it seems to be back and fine now so here we are!
tl;dr: more visual effects, rhythm combo super thrusts, 1 new NPC/quest
Animations
I came up with an idea for rhythms that I hope you'll enjoy - rhythm combos now lead to a faster super animations! This means you and the entity both get a progress/rate boost - you both go towards finishing faster. This involves adding more sub-animations, but they're mostly derivative of the old ones so it shouldn't take too long to add to all the entities in the jungle. I aim to at least add super animations to all the roaming entities so that competing with them is more fun
I'll probably post the full cat-tailed lady's quest reward on socials at some point soon because I've been neglecting my socials a bit too much recently, so expect to see some animations there!
And here's a teaser of the P potion visual effect and ogre lady animation! She's part of the cat-tailed lady's potion quest, so you basically get a bonus animation as a reward while doing it. Compared to an adult/human witch like Erisia she's pretty tall! :)
I've also added another NPC for a simple hide-and-seek quest where Erisia gets to use her mouth - she's a plant lady who is going to blend in with her environment until you find her. This is likely the last full animation for the second demo release, but there's also another tentacle animation that I haven't shown off yet, and the Panthrill boss reward animation - the former has been "basically done" for a while, but the latter is still in progress
Visual effects
I doubled down on making more visual effects (2d shaders, if you're curious!) and I decided to make save altars stand out a bit more - they're quite important so I think it's worth highlighting them. Now they have long beams of magic light reaching up from the save altar, and when you use the save altar they become wavy to indicate the save altar cooling down before you can save again
Another VFX I did was these magic wind streams that exist to show paths and guide players towards certain areas. Some players were having trouble finding the breast shopkeeper, so even if there's a map menu now, I'd rather have the environment guide you all to important areas
(see the top GIF - it also looks less square/dotted if you open it in a new tab)
I've added bubbles that act as magic "buttons" with a visible progress circle and they activate things. For example, there are shortcut lifts in the dark forest that can be unlocked from above via these bubbles. There's a bubble button in the jungle that you'll run into on the second demo, too... :)
I improved the in-game menu so it feels more magical now - like you're peering into a magic portal, instead of the boring gray/brown-ish square background that was there before
And finally: I've made a few more VFX shaders - some for fun because they won't be useful until later parts of the game, but some as experimentation for status effects - I want a visual effect for when players are affected by entities after a full animation ends - purple tentacles make you fast and slippery, bee ladies give you low gravity, and so on - but it's not quite obvious that it happens. I haven't quite landed on a VFX I like for that yet, so I'm gonna keep experimenting with some ideas I have
Otherwise
I'm hoping the next progress update, around mid August, that I'll have an approximate release date for the second demo, since content-wise there isn't anything planned that isn't already in progress now - I have to finish whatever animation work I have left, then focus on everything else after that: playtesting, optimisation, game logic, bugfixing... and finally, the release :)
That's it for now!
Comments
Mia Valentine
Absolutely lovely! I knew this was a gem in the making the moment I gave it a try, and you're proving it true quickly!
